Re: Renaming of enumeration constant

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Jean-Pierre Rosen wrote:

> Ada83 because Ichbiah insisted on it, due to his previous experience.

I remember a comment by Robert Dewar about a DR meeting where the issue 
of removing derived types from Ada was discssed.  Robert said: "...the 
vote was 8 to Ichbiah, so it will probably be reversed."

Robert was right on the reversal, but I always remember that comment by 
Robert Dewar when anyone says that Ada was designed by a committee. 
There were a lot of committees that had input into and influence over 
the final form of Ada 83, but Jean Ichbiah always had the last say after 
he listened to all the input.

I also remember when the first thing that Jean Ichbiah--or anyone--said 
to me at an early AdaTEC meeting in SanDiego was "Seven insults.  Seven 
insults in one paragraph what were you thinking of?"

I sort of looked blank and he said, "You were talking about the new rule 
forbidding nested accept statements."

"Only seven?  I thought there were more than that, but they had nothing 
to do with you."

"Some were in the next paragraph."

"Okay, I think the problem is that you were not at the first AdaTEC 
meeting in New York..."

There was a problem in Ada 80, that the parameter declarations for 
accept statements were elaborated when the task was created.  I showed a 
nasty example that "proved" that this needed to be fixed in the 
Reference Manual.  But some people didn't understand that my nasty 
example was just that, and tried it against the ALS and AdaEd 
implementations.

The result was what erroneous programs only threaten to do, unimaginable 
chaos.  In the case of AdaEd, it crashed not only AdaEd, but the VAX it 
was running on, due to a known bug in VMS.

So at the next DR meeting, nested accept statements must go.  Of course, 
the bug in the reference manual was fixed also, so there was no need to 
outlaw nested accept statements.  But that rule is still in the 
language.  (Of course, the 'insults' were aimed at the people who didn't 
understand the example, and ignored the "-- disaster" comment in my 
example.  I still think some of them were descriptive, not insults:  "of 
all the stupid, idiotic, bird-brained things to do,...)

Then again, I remember EE students presented with a "Handy-Dandy Fuse 
Tester" plugging it into a wall-socket and pressing the button.  (The 
label of course said "If indicator light goes out when button is 
pressed, fuse was good.")

Some things did get into Ada that Ichbiah didn't like, like the support 
for terminals that did not allow full ASCII.  But if he felt strongly 
about something, he stood his ground.

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

The ideology he opposed throughout his political life insisted that 
history was moved by impersonal tides and unalterable fates. Ronald 
Reagan believed instead in the courage and triumph of free men and we 
believe it all the more because we saw that courage in him.  -- George 
W. Bush June 11, 2004