Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Funny paper I’ve never read before. In the middle of the page (the link  
follows) you read:

> Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?  It depends on who you ask.
> According to Bertrand Meyer (peut-etre il a parle a Jean?), Jean
> —who had been writing Simula compilers, and was thus familiar with
> the paradigm— thought that dynamic binding would have been too
> radical for the conservative DoD, who after all were the ones
> commissioning the language, and so he figured they wouldn't go for
> it.  According to others, Jean in fact didn't want type extension and
> dynamic binding, because he didn't think it was necessary.

Quoted from:  
http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=Advocacy&CID=39

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:22:18 +0100, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)  
<yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> a écrit:
> Quoted from:  
> http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=Advocacy&CID=39

Then later after the above quote, there are some words about type  
extention's dark sides, and a funny quote again:

> Funny story: A new programmer just started using Ada, and posted a
> question to this newsgroup.  He had been reading in Mike Feldman's
> introductory book about the abstract data types in Ada, and remarked
> that ADTs reminded him of object-oriented programming.  He wanted to
> know what the difference was between the two.

Interesting reaction.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Fun with History: ³Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?²

[Bill Findlay]

On 17/02/2012 17:22, in article op.v9t2jgpmule2fv@douda-yannick, "Yannick
Duch�ne   (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote:

> Funny paper I�ve never read before. In the middle of the page (the link
> follows) you read:
> 
>> Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?  It depends on who you ask.
>> According to Bertrand Meyer (peut-etre il a parle a Jean?), Jean
>> �who had been writing Simula compilers, and was thus familiar with
>> the paradigm� thought that dynamic binding would have been too
>> radical for the conservative DoD, who after all were the ones
>> commissioning the language, and so he figured they wouldn't go for
>> it.  According to others, Jean in fact didn't want type extension and
>> dynamic binding, because he didn't think it was necessary.
> 
> Quoted from:  
> http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=Advocacy&CID=39

What an excellent discussion that is.
I'd add a further reason for Ada's unpopularity: the mere fact that it was
sponsored by the DoD was enough to turn the infantile left of academe
against it, so it was not taught. I know this from personal experience.

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Marco]

4. Early compilers were way, way too expensive, and compilers were (and
   still are today) very difficult to implement...

   The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
   compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
   your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language.  Ada
   essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never
   able to develop the grass-roots support that Pascal and C had
   (because those languages were relatively easy to implement, and were
   therefore much more readily available).

I lived and worked through this time period and I believe this is by FAR the main reason Ada was not as popular. Primarily because the DoD did not allow or define a nice subset (excluding tasking for example) that would have allowed a DOS Turbo-Ada to be created for a reasonable price. We used Ada as a design language and then implemented it in C (this was not very efficient but some of us were quite interested in the new language). 

Of course OO is longer considered the silver bullet today. I am learning Haskell.

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Simon Wright]

Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> writes:

> We used Ada as a design language and then implemented it in C (this
> was not very efficient but some of us were quite interested in the new
> language).

I remember using Ada as a design language and implementing in assembler!
Led to some interesting rumours ... and produced a rock-solid product (1
bug since the first release in about 1985, fixed in 1986).

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:23:46 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a  
écrit:
> I remember using Ada as a design language and implementing in assembler!
> Led to some interesting rumours ... and produced a rock-solid product (1
> bug since the first release in about 1985, fixed in 1986).
Talking about designing in a language and implementing in another, I am  
seeking for any pointers about designing in SML and implementing in Ada.  
Not that I have any trouble with this (I know a bit what can be mapped and  
what cannot easily be), just that I feel this would be profitable to read  
about other's experiences with this.

By the way, I do too believe if one want to implement in C or assembly,  
that's indeed profitable to first design in Ada (if really Ada is not an  
option at implementation stage for some weird reasons). But then the  
design have to be checked, so I guess it is compiled in some way, so why  
not use the compiled product instead? Due to a not available platform?  
What platform then? Or else there may be other reasons, then could you  
tell more about these reasons?

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Simon Wright]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> By the way, I do too believe if one want to implement in C or
> assembly, that's indeed profitable to first design in Ada (if really
> Ada is not an option at implementation stage for some weird
> reasons). But then the design have to be checked, so I guess it is
> compiled in some way, so why not use the compiled product instead?
> Due to a not available platform?  What platform then? Or else there
> may be other reasons, then could you tell more about these reasons?

The target processor was a Ferranti F2420[1], a 3-address word-addressed
24-bit-word machine (with an assembler looking strikingly like the
notation used by Ada to discuss the Analytical Engine[2]).

The requirement was to produce a Mascot[3] kernel, a light-weight RTS.

I used Ada to make sure the design was internally consistent, but there
was a point at which I had to say 'at this point a miracle happens'[4],
ie switching between one activity (thread, task) and another. The
compiler was an early Telelogic compiler, I think, and host/target was
VAX.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti#Computers - end of section
[2] http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html - eg Note C
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_Approach_to_Software_Construction_Operation_and_Test
[4] http://www.flickr.com/photos/skepticalist/4372728626/

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Phil Clayton]

On Feb 23, 4:53 pm, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Le Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:23:46 +0100, Simon Wright <si...@pushface.org> a
> écrit:> I remember using Ada as a design language and implementing in assembler!
> > Led to some interesting rumours ... and produced a rock-solid product (1
> > bug since the first release in about 1985, fixed in 1986).
>
> Talking about designing in a language and implementing in another, I am
> seeking for any pointers about designing in SML and implementing in Ada.
> Not that I have any trouble with this (I know a bit what can be mapped and
> what cannot easily be), just that I feel this would be profitable to read
> about other's experiences with this.

I would imagine that such experiences have many similarities to model-
based design approaches where the design is executable, e.g. SCADE,
Simulink/Stateflow etc.  I too would be interested to know about any
specific experience using a functional language for design, not
necessarily SML, and implementation in a language like Ada, C.

Re: Fun with History: “Why wasn't Ada83 object oriented?”

[Peter C. Chapin]

On 2012-02-23 11:53, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Talking about designing in a language and implementing in another, I am
> seeking for any pointers about designing in SML and implementing in Ada.
> Not that I have any trouble with this (I know a bit what can be mapped
> and what cannot easily be), just that I feel this would be profitable to
> read about other's experiences with this.

I needed to write some security processing software in nesC, a dialect 
of C used in wireless sensor networks [1]. The ultimate target had to be 
nesC for compatibility with the TinyOS operating system [2]. I wrote a 
draft of my program in SPARK and proved it free of run time error. I 
then manually translated the SPARK to nesC. I made a couple of minor 
typos during the translation, only one of which made it by the nesC 
compiler. Other than that the system worked perfectly the first time.

The resulting code is atypical looking nesC but what do I care?

Peter

[1] http://nescc.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.tinyos.net/

Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[tmoran]

>  The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
>  compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
>  your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language.  Ada
>  essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never

  The obvious lesson here is that advertising is supreme.  There was
in fact a $100 Ada that ran on DOS machines - I know because I bought
it to try out this new language named Ada.  I think the ad I saw was in
Byte magazine, but it surely wasn't as much press as Lotus or Ovation(?)
the never-did-exist system described in a cover article.

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Marco]

On Friday, February 24, 2012 2:32:43 PM UTC-7, tmo...@acm.org wrote:
> >  The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
> >  compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
> >  your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language.  Ada
> >  essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never
> 
>   The obvious lesson here is that advertising is supreme.  There was
> in fact a $100 Ada that ran on DOS machines - I know because I bought
> it to try out this new language named Ada.  I think the ad I saw was in
> Byte magazine, but it surely wasn't as much press as Lotus or Ovation(?)
> the never-did-exist system described in a cover article.

It probably wasn't legal to use the term "Ada" for an incomplete implementation and they were probably sued by the DoD.

If Borland bought it and re-sold it as Turbo-Ada who knows what would have happened?

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Marco]

On Friday, February 24, 2012 2:32:43 PM UTC-7, tmo...@acm.org wrote:

Hey here was an example that have could have made an impact on learning the language if it occurred earlier in the mid-1980s before everyone jumped on the C++ bus:

ftp://ftp.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/Ada-Belgium/mirrors/pal/userdocs/html/cardcat/smallada.html

"This is a compiler/interpreter for a part of the Ada language, namely
the "Pascal subset" plus the Ada tasking support. It is not intended
ever to be a full Ada compiler, rather a vehicle for teaching, learning,
and experimenting with concurrent programming. The compiler is quite
fast, producing P-code which is then interpreted by the interpreter."

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 26/02/2012 15:53, Marco a �crit :
> If Borland bought it and re-sold it as Turbo-Ada who knows what would have happened?
> 
Actually, they had such a project, but they gave up when they discovered
that they wouldn't be allowed to make a Turbo Ada that would be better
than regular Ada.

-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
http://www.adalog.fr

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:59:07 +0100, Dennis Lee Bieber  
<wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> a écrit:

> On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:53:31 -0800 (PST), Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.ada:
>
>>
>> It probably wasn't legal to use the term "Ada" for an incomplete  
>> implementation and they were probably sued by the DoD.
>
> 	At the least, a cease&desist order...
>
> 	As I recall, DOD had the name locked down to "no subset, no
> superset" -- if it diverged from the language reference, it could not be
> called "Ada".

To be exact, this is allowed if the compiler provides an option to make it  
act in strict Ada mode. This is explicitly stated somewhere in the first  
pages of the Reference Manual.

To be named an Ada compiler, the compiler must be able to compile all  
legal Ada source and reject all illegal Ada source. This does not disallow  
a compiler to act another way depending on its options, it just mean it  
must be able to act the legal way.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[tmoran]

>It probably wasn't legal to use the term "Ada" for an incomplete
>implementation and they were probably sued by the DoD.
  Shaking the dust off a JANUS/Ada manual dated January 1988, I see it
says "Validated Ada" and "This product conforms to ANSI-MIL-STD-1815A as
determined by the AJPO under its current testing procedures".  The
introduction also says "The JANUS/Ada Extended Tutorial is the most
cost-effective Ada training tool available on MS-DOS machines today."

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 02/26/2012 11:28 AM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
>
> To be exact, this is allowed if the compiler provides an option to make it act
> in strict Ada mode. This is explicitly stated somewhere in the first pages of
> the Reference Manual.

Prior to Ada 95, Ada was a registered trademark of the DoD, and the DoD did not 
allow their trademark to be used for anything except the complete language 
specified in the ARM.

The joke at the time was that defense contractors would hire anyone who knew how 
to spell Ada. The correct spelling was "Ada®".

-- 
Jeff Carter
"If you think you got a nasty taunting this time,
you ain't heard nothing yet!"
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
23

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Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 26/02/2012 22:56, Gautier write-only a �crit :
> The success of Turbo Pascal was due to a genial idea that the need of
> most programmers are not much having a compiler but having a full
> development tool focused on a quick development cycle. They offered:
> 1) an integrated editor
> 2) a fast native-code compiler (at the expense of compiled code
> quality, but nobody cared)
> Not sure if any Ada compiler - cheap or not - in the whole 80's was
> able to do that.

Meridian was close to that, and was a nice environment (that's the first
one I used for theaching - worked nicely on 386/25 machines).

Too bad Meridian was bought by Verdix, then Verdix was bought by
Rational, and Rational was not interested in low end compilers.
-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
http://www.adalog.fr

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Gautier write-only]

On 24 fév, 22:32, tmo...@acm.org wrote:
> >  The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
> >  compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
> >  your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language.  Ada
> >  essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never
>
>   The obvious lesson here is that advertising is supreme.  There was
> in fact a $100 Ada that ran on DOS machines - I know because I bought
> it to try out this new language named Ada.  I think the ad I saw was in
> Byte magazine, but it surely wasn't as much press as Lotus or Ovation(?)
> the never-did-exist system described in a cover article.

Advertising is an important component, but not all.
For instance mouth-to-ear (and black copies on diskettes...)
contributed to the success of some compilers.
The quality of the product is also primordial.
The success of Turbo Pascal was due to a genial idea that the need of
most programmers are not much having a compiler but having a full
development tool focused on a quick development cycle. They offered:
1) an integrated editor
2) a fast native-code compiler (at the expense of compiled code
quality, but nobody cared)
Not sure if any Ada compiler - cheap or not - in the whole 80's was
able to do that.
_________________________
Gautier's Ada programming
http://sf.net/users/gdemont

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[tmoran]

>Meridian was close to that, and was a nice environment (that's the first
>one I used for theaching - worked nicely on 386/25 machines).
  I recall porting a program from Janus Ada on the PC to Meridian Ada on
the Macintosh - so Meridian's compiler must not have been terribly
expensive.  ;)

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[anon]

When the DOD looked for a language in the mid 1970s the dismissed both 
the procedural languages like Cobol or Fortran and functional languages 
like Lisp and C. They wanted a Tasking language.

And also at the time OOP (Object-oriented programming) was associated 
with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and directly link to languages like LISP 
and the educational Pascal language. Both languages were dismissed by the 
DOD. And so was S. Tucker Taft's OOP (Object-oriented programming) language.

But the ARG choose Taff's design in 1987 for Ada 95 and for the next 25 
years Taff has tried to insert Object-oriented features into Ada that was 
not initially designed for oop. Which has led to more problems with 
compatibility and maintainability of code.

And side note: OOPs did not come into its own until the 1990s and Ada 83
development was started in the late 1970s and finished in 1987.




In <7034d83a-698b-42fa-b13f-31461ed6e50e@do4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>, Gautier write-only <gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com> writes:
>On 24 f=E9v, 22:32, tmo...@acm.org wrote:
>> > =A0The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
>> > =A0compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
>> > =A0your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language. =A0Ad=
>a
>> > =A0essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never
>>
>> =A0 The obvious lesson here is that advertising is supreme. =A0There was
>> in fact a $100 Ada that ran on DOS machines - I know because I bought
>> it to try out this new language named Ada. =A0I think the ad I saw was in
>> Byte magazine, but it surely wasn't as much press as Lotus or Ovation(?)
>> the never-did-exist system described in a cover article.
>
>Advertising is an important component, but not all.
>For instance mouth-to-ear (and black copies on diskettes...)
>contributed to the success of some compilers.
>The quality of the product is also primordial.
>The success of Turbo Pascal was due to a genial idea that the need of
>most programmers are not much having a compiler but having a full
>development tool focused on a quick development cycle. They offered:
>1) an integrated editor
>2) a fast native-code compiler (at the expense of compiled code
>quality, but nobody cared)
>Not sure if any Ada compiler - cheap or not - in the whole 80's was
>able to do that.
>_________________________
>Gautier's Ada programming
>http://sf.net/users/gdemont

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:15:13 +0100, <anon@att.net> a écrit:
> But the ARG choose Taff's design in 1987 for Ada 95 and for the next 25
> years Taff has tried to insert Object-oriented features into Ada that was
> not initially designed for oop. Which has led to more problems with
> compatibility and maintainability of code.
The model is still nice, because orthogonal, and as quoted elsewhere, OOP  
is not just what people believes, which is mainly syntax for class and  
dispatching. Private parts, abstract types and references via names‑spaces  
is also the topic, and all of this is well done in Ada since the beginning.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:05:45 +0100, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:15:13 +0100, <anon@att.net> a �crit:
>> But the ARG choose Taff's design in 1987 for Ada 95 and for the next 25
>> years Taff has tried to insert Object-oriented features into Ada that was
>> not initially designed for oop. Which has led to more problems with
>> compatibility and maintainability of code.
> The model is still nice,

The model was groundbreaking, the only one consistent with proper typing,
AFAIK. The problem is that it is still not applied to all types as it
should have been. Which is possible to do without compromising either
performance or backward compatibility. 

> OOP is not just what people believes,

But opposition to OO is. Nonsense that there could be OO and non-OO designs
is kept repeated on and on, in comp.lang.ada as well.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Adam Beneschan]

On Feb 26, 10:28 am, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Le Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:59:07 +0100, Dennis Lee Bieber
> <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> a écrit:
>
> > On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:53:31 -0800 (PST), Marco <prenom_no...@yahoo.com>
> > declaimed the following in comp.lang.ada:
>
> >> It probably wasn't legal to use the term "Ada" for an incomplete
> >> implementation and they were probably sued by the DoD.
>
> >    At the least, a cease&desist order...
>
> >    As I recall, DOD had the name locked down to "no subset, no
> > superset" -- if it diverged from the language reference, it could not be
> > called "Ada".
>
> To be exact, this is allowed if the compiler provides an option to make it
> act in strict Ada mode. This is explicitly stated somewhere in the first
> pages of the Reference Manual.

That has been the case starting with Ada 95.  But, by then, Ada was no
longer trademarked.

The inside cover of my copy of the earlier Reference Manual (for what
we now call Ada 83) stated that "Ada(R) is a registered trademark of
the United States Government, Department of Defense, Under Secretary
for Research and Engineering ... In all contexts, use of the term
"Ada" should indicate conformance to the standard. ... The use of the
trademarked term Ada will be made freely available to those who use it
to indicate conformance to the standard and in conformance with the
following guidelines:

...
Describing, advertising, or promoting a language processor as an "Ada"
processor is equivalent to making a voluntary statement of conformance
to ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A.

The term Ada may be used in describing language processors which are
not completely conforming or are not making a claim of conformance
provided that there is a precise, easily visible statement of their
non-conformance at the same time and in the same context."

There's something about misuse of the term possibly leading to legal
action, but the cover of my Ada 83 RM has been torn up over the years
and I can't quote it.

The trademark was allowed to lapse in 1987.  After that, I believe, it
would have been legal to call a compiler an Ada compiler even if it
was just a subset.  It couldn't claim to be certified or validated,
which might have been a stopper for big commercial users, but probably
not for hobbyists paying $100 for a PC version.

                             -- Adam

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 02/27/2012 10:37 AM, Adam Beneschan wrote:
>
> There's something about misuse of the term possibly leading to legal
> action, but the cover of my Ada 83 RM has been torn up over the years
> and I can't quote it.

"Uses of the term Ada other than those described above, including all 
organizations, companies and product names incorporating or utilizing the term 
Ada, need written authorization from the AJPO. Those persons advertising or 
otherwise promoting a language processor asserted as being a standard Ada 
processor for sale or public use are required to provide the AJPO with evidence 
sufficient to demonstrate conformance to the Ada standard.

"Use of the trademark does not imply any endorsement or warranty of the product 
by either DoD or ANSI.

"The Department of Defense (DoD), as the trademark owner, will allow others to 
use the Ada trademark free of charge and will not take action to prevent use of 
the trademark so long as the trademark is used properly according to the above 
policy. Misuse of the trademark may lead to legal action."

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Beyond 100,000 lines of code you
should probably be coding in Ada."
P. J. Plauger
26

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Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Randy Brukardt]

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message news:ji8vlq$5d3$1@speranza.aioe.org...
>>  The obvious repercussion of this is that there weren't any cheap
>>  compilers (say, in the US$50 - US$100 range) that you could run on
>>  your PC at home, so no one could experiment with the language.  Ada
>>  essentially missed the boat in the PC revolution, and so was never
>
>  The obvious lesson here is that advertising is supreme.  There was
> in fact a $100 Ada that ran on DOS machines - I know because I bought
> it to try out this new language named Ada.  I think the ad I saw was in
> Byte magazine, but it surely wasn't as much press as Lotus or Ovation(?)
> the never-did-exist system described in a cover article.

Besides that ;-), RRS started out on PCs before they were called PCs. We 
sold our first compilers for CP/M. We called them "Janus" because we really 
didn't have any intent of doing full Ada, and thus didn't want to promise 
that. But we had more trouble with people claiming to own the name "Janus" 
than anything to do with the DoD. Thus we quickly changed to "Janus/Ada", 
which it has been ever since. Also note that there were several competing 
"Ada" compilers advertised (not all sold) at the time.

Note that the DoD's supposed trademark proved to be unenforcable. On top of 
that, they had to let us use the name after they had let Telesoft and a 
variety of other companies market subsets. Can't treat a smaller business 
differently.

In any case, we were selling $99 compilers before Turbo Pascal even came out 
(but after some other low-cost compilers). The lack of inexpensive compilers 
was not the reason that Ada was not used more on PCs; I think it was more 
that other languages were more promoted and built up better ecosystems. I 
recall being very frusterated that people would create and try to sell that 
22nd C utility library when creating the first such library for Ada (a 
language much better suited to reusable libraries anyway) would almost 
certainly have been more profitable for them. (Me-too products never make 
much money.)

                                            Randy.

Re: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented

[Randy Brukardt]

As Tom pointed out, Janus/Ada did full Ada 83 on MS-DOS by late 1987; and 
the Meridian people beat us by a few months.

Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM PC in 
1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers were 
competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) -- the dirt 
cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including versions of 
Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our catelog at $129).

Anyone who claims that lack of reasonably priced compilers had anything to 
do with the lack of Ada growth is just ignorant. There were lots of factors, 
but that is not one of them.

                                                Randy.

"Marco" <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:13615928.2120.1330273323697.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynjd19...
> On Friday, February 24, 2012 2:32:43 PM UTC-7, tmo...@acm.org wrote:
>
> Hey here was an example that have could have made an impact on learning 
> the language if it occurred earlier in the mid-1980s before everyone 
> jumped on the C++ bus:
>
> ftp://ftp.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/Ada-Belgium/mirrors/pal/userdocs/html/cardcat/smallada.html
>
> "This is a compiler/interpreter for a part of the Ada language, namely
> the "Pascal subset" plus the Ada tasking support. It is not intended
> ever to be a full Ada compiler, rather a vehicle for teaching, learning,
> and experimenting with concurrent programming. The compiler is quite
> fast, producing P-code which is then interpreted by the interpreter."
> 

Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM
> PC in 1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers
> were competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) --
> the dirt cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including
> versions of Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our
> catelog at $129).

Why was it that I couldn't find it in 1993, when I was actually looking
for an Ada compiler?

I suppose I wasn't looking in the right place.  But where was the right
place to look back then?

I think the compiler vendors (and the Ada community as a whole) are
doing a much better job of making potential customers aware of the
availability of Ada compilers now.  But is there something that can be
improved?  (Assuming the same marketing budget.)

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"Sleep is just a cheap substitute for coffee"

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2012-03-07, Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk> wrote:
> Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM
>> PC in 1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers
>> were competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) --
>> the dirt cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including
>> versions of Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our
>> catelog at $129).
>
> Why was it that I couldn't find it in 1993, when I was actually looking
> for an Ada compiler?
>
> I suppose I wasn't looking in the right place.  But where was the right
> place to look back then?
>

For myself, living in the UK, one place in that timeframe was a company
called Grey Matter.

I was very aware of Janus/Ada and various other Ada compilers (no, I cannot
remember which ones) because I remember at least one of the products
stood out in the Grey Matter price lists. I was very tempted, but in the
end never actually purchased a Ada compiler from Grey Matter.

[My first actual use of Ada was with gcc (in the gcc 2.8 timeframe),
which was much later.]

I knew about Ada before that, but didn't know about any low cost compilers
until I saw the Grey Matter product lists. I remember the advertising
material been printed on coloured (maybe green) paper detailing the
product.

I cannot remember if the Janus/Ada advertising material originated from
Grey Matter or if Randy's company originally created it and it was
re-distributed by Grey Matter.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Randy Brukardt]

"Jacob Sparre Andersen" <sparre@nbi.dk> wrote in message 
news:87d38ohf9g.fsf_-_@adaheads.sparre-andersen.dk...
> Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM
>> PC in 1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers
>> were competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) --
>> the dirt cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including
>> versions of Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our
>> catelog at $129).
>
> Why was it that I couldn't find it in 1993, when I was actually looking
> for an Ada compiler?
>
> I suppose I wasn't looking in the right place.  But where was the right
> place to look back then?

I don't know. I can't remember how we ever could have found anything prior 
to AltaVista. (I'm not going to give Google credit for something that they 
didn't invent...:-).

Advertising was hit-or-miss. (And our budget was $0 by 1993.) Lists of 
validated compilers and the like helped, but you had to know about the AdaIC 
in order to get that information. Trade shows like SIGAda were a good place 
to find out things, but you had to know about them. And so on...

                      Randy.

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Randy Brukardt]

"Simon Clubley" <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote in 
message news:jj7l54$m14$1@dont-email.me...
...
> I knew about Ada before that, but didn't know about any low cost compilers
> until I saw the Grey Matter product lists. I remember the advertising
> material been printed on coloured (maybe green) paper detailing the
> product.
>
> I cannot remember if the Janus/Ada advertising material originated from
> Grey Matter or if Randy's company originally created it and it was
> re-distributed by Grey Matter.

Possibly both. We used green colored brochures back in the 1980s for a 
while, but I think we'd gotten rid of them in favor of a brighter design by 
1993. But I honestly only remember the "Ada 94" (which had to be reprinted 
as "Ada 95") brochures, the last ones we had printed in quanity. By 1997, we 
did everything on the web. (I think I have collection of those old brochures 
somewhere, but I no longer remember where... ;-)

                                           Randy.

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[anon]

Note: It has been stated that's Adacores position is "We don't sell 
cheap Ada compilers".

One reason Ada sells were hurt in the beginning because of the attitude 
the world had of anything connected with the US DOD. Especially with the 
locks the DOD had upon Ada. 

Now back in the 1980s, America was still trying to get over Vietnam. So, 
a lot of people including professors did not talk about Ada or anything 
created by the DOD. Plus, people assume the purpose of Ada was government 
business only, so unless you were willing to work for the US for the next 
35 plus years, Ada was not worth learning. And back in the 1980s the last 
job a programmer wanted was to work for the military. Private sector was 
were a programmer could explore their boundaries of programming without 
the long arm of the government shutting them down.

Now, at the same time stores selling computer software were mostly selling 
games or simple business programs like accounting packages on 5 inch disks 
(360K) or 3.5 inch disks (720K). And BBS (pre-public internet) were little 
more than picture and forums sites with a few bin downloads. And at 1.2Kb 
for "Genie" and 300 baud for Compusrve (pre-AOL) with per minute rates, it 
was not worth spending the time to located and download the "Adaed" 
(NYU: Ada 83 for DOS) source file that may not even work on your system, 
and then you also had to have a C compiler or spend more time download one. 

As for colleges in the 1980s, most small colleges limited the use of the 
internet to research or remote classes, due to bandwidth cost.  Later in 
the early 1990s the usage was still limited to programming classes or 
research or and a few Pear-to-Pear Video classes. So, downloading GNAT 
from NYU in 1990s had to be related to an Ada programming class.

Now, GNAT was developed at NYU and FSU in 1992 for Sun and IBM OS/2 
workstation, then later they came out with a version for Windows. As 
for Linux in 1994 you could purchase a Linux CD set which included a 
pre-compile GNAT Ada version for a few dollars. But at the same time 
you could just purchase a Ada CD set, which contain a number of trial 
binary Ada's for MS-DOS, Sun, Linux, OS/2, and Windows at your local 
software shop.

But by the time Ada 95 was adopted the popularity of Ada started to slip 
and when the DOD drop it mandate in 1998 the slippage became a flood of 
programmers backing away from Ada and a lot of colleges halted teaching 
Ada. 

Then there is Microsoft which had never sold or support Ada, which 
means to masses as well as most schools, that Ada is just a historical 
reference of a failed attempt by the US DOD to create and use a single 
computer language for the entire US government.

As for those outside of America in the 1980s, they did not trust anything 
associate with the DOD. Plus with the DOD locks, only a limited number of 
vendors could sell Ada outside the US.


In <87d38ohf9g.fsf_-_@adaheads.sparre-andersen.dk>, Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk> writes:
>Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM
>> PC in 1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers
>> were competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) --
>> the dirt cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including
>> versions of Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our
>> catelog at $129).
>
>Why was it that I couldn't find it in 1993, when I was actually looking
>for an Ada compiler?
>
>I suppose I wasn't looking in the right place.  But where was the right
>place to look back then?
>
>I think the compiler vendors (and the Ada community as a whole) are
>doing a much better job of making potential customers aware of the
>availability of Ada compilers now.  But is there something that can be
>improved?  (Assuming the same marketing budget.)
>
>Greetings,
>
>Jacob
>-- 
>"Sleep is just a cheap substitute for coffee"

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2012-03-07, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Jacob Sparre Andersen" <sparre@nbi.dk> wrote in message 
> news:87d38ohf9g.fsf_-_@adaheads.sparre-andersen.dk...
>> Randy Brukardt wrote:
>>
>>> Subset versions of Janus/Ada were introduced in 1981, and on the IBM
>>> PC in 1982. There were other companies, too. All of these compilers
>>> were competitively priced for the time (several hundred dollars) --
>>> the dirt cheap compilers (in more ways than one) came later (including
>>> versions of Janus/Ada for $99; indeed, that compiler is *still* in our
>>> catelog at $129).
>>
>> Why was it that I couldn't find it in 1993, when I was actually looking
>> for an Ada compiler?
>>
>> I suppose I wasn't looking in the right place.  But where was the right
>> place to look back then?
>
> I don't know. I can't remember how we ever could have found anything prior 
> to AltaVista. (I'm not going to give Google credit for something that they 
> didn't invent...:-).
>

Back in those days, there was still a viable marketplace for serious
computing magazines as well as the various game commodity level magazines.
Those serious magazines were a primary source of current trends and
information for me in those days.

My personal path to finding out about Janus/Ada in the same timeframe
(maybe even a year or two earlier) went something like:

1) Read one of those magazines on a monthly basis.
2) Notice a advert by someone called Grey Matter selling compilers.
3) Request their full price list.
4) Notice the cheap compilers including something called Janus/Ada.
5) Request detailed information on this new to me compiler.
6) Come close to buying it (but I never did; sorry Randy :-))

> Advertising was hit-or-miss. (And our budget was $0 by 1993.) Lists of 
> validated compilers and the like helped, but you had to know about the AdaIC 
> in order to get that information. Trade shows like SIGAda were a good place 
> to find out things, but you had to know about them. And so on...
>

Explaining this advertising world to someone under 20 is like explaining
what life was like, say, before television to those of us who have never
known a world without multiple television options. A non-Internet world
is totally foreign to them.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Shark8]

On Thursday, March 8, 2012 3:00:15 AM UTC-6, an...@att.net wrote:
> 
> Then there is Microsoft which had never sold or support Ada, which 
> means to masses as well as most schools, that Ada is just a historical 
> reference of a failed attempt by the US DOD to create and use a single 
> computer language for the entire US government.

Now there is an interesting point to consider. I once had an online conversation with a guy who did a security-review for MS Windows (pre 95, it could have been 1.0) and he company recommended rewriting it in Ada. I wonder how many buffer-overrun attacks would have been thwarted if they had taken the advice; or what the presence of tasking and select/accept would have done to the architecture[s] of the Windows OSes.

Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

[Randy Brukardt]

"Simon Clubley" <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote in 
message news:jja87m$kna$1@dont-email.me...
> On 2012-03-07, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
...
>> Advertising was hit-or-miss. (And our budget was $0 by 1993.) Lists of
>> validated compilers and the like helped, but you had to know about the 
>> AdaIC
>> in order to get that information. Trade shows like SIGAda were a good 
>> place
>> to find out things, but you had to know about them. And so on...
>
> Explaining this advertising world to someone under 20 is like explaining
> what life was like, say, before television to those of us who have never
> known a world without multiple television options. A non-Internet world
> is totally foreign to them.

No kidding. Even I don't really remember how I found things pre-Internet. 
And the truth is, often you didn't find out about things. I'm sure I built 
plenty of software that I could have gotten from somewhere else (of course, 
me writing it meant it was in Ada, so it at least seemed more reliable).

Pre-Internet, Pre-cell phone was a very different world. (Kids used to wait 
by the phone for their friends to call them...and monopolize the single 
family phone for hours. Now they just monopolize the computer...)

                                Randy.