Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0201310714.650888e1@posting.google.com...
>
> The only thing I found completely wrong was the assertion that you
> can't call an Ada compiler "Ada" without going through validation or
> the copyright holder to the term will come after you. The DoD isn't
> enforcing that copyright anymore. It is the Ada community that demands
> validation, not any one entity. But that would probably have been
> tougher to explain properly.
>
Maybe true, but it seems a nit to pick. There was a time when the DoD *did*
insist that it pass validation if you wanted to use the name Ada - so at
worst, he's a little out of date. This issue was even misunderstood by the
Ada community itself - leading to the view that you couldn't make subsets or
extensions (something that really hurt the use of Ada in embedded machines
in the early days) Anyway, I wouldn't pick on that too much. Its almost
better to leave people with that impression because they will believe in its
standardization, quality and portability - even if it isn't exactly true.


>
> I really think Ada 83 was just *waaaaay* ahead of its time. Back in
> the 80's and early 90's you'd quite often hear people seriously argue
> *against* type checking. These days that's pretty rare (see some of
> Eric Raymond's writings, if you want a trip back in that particular
> way-back machine). Now that folks are using Java and C++ regularly and
> can see for themselves the benifits to compile-time checking and
> object-oriented design, suddenly Ada doesn't look so bad any more.
>
It was waaaaay ahead of its time. Generics and Tasking were barely
understood by the compiler writers. Also ahead of the necessary hardware to
run the compiler or the resultant code. But it did succeed in dragging
compiler technology ahead.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/