From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-16 23:16:23 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Date: 16 Apr 2003 23:16:22 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <3E4E8F8C.9C096985@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302250710.5549baaf@posting.google.com> <3E5C7033.BD5DC462@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302260618.7506cba7@posting.google.com> <3E5CF5C6.84822F57@adaworks.com> <8qkczsAcGcn+Ew83@nildram.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.8.249.129 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1050560183 22109 127.0.0.1 (17 Apr 2003 06:16:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 Apr 2003 06:16:23 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:62294 comp.object:61223 comp.lang.ada:36229 misc.misc:13378 Date: 2003-04-17T06:16:23+00:00 List-Id: Tom Welsh wrote: > Kent Paul Dolan writes: >> Richard Riehle wrote: >>> The language is structured around a >>> few simple principles. >> Which seem to be "simple" only in the >> minds of computer language theorists, >> not in the minds of us mere >> programmers, to whom the reasons for >> which these principles are >> meritorious and why they should >> govern our lives are still quite >> convincingly opaque. > Which "computer language theorists" > are you talking about? Surely not Jean > D. Ichbiah, Bernd Krieg-Bruechner, > Brian A. Wichmann, Henry F. Ledgard, > Jean-Claude Heliard, Jean-Loup Gailly, > Jean-Ryanmond Abrial, John G. P. > Barnes, Mike Woodger, Olivier Roubine, > Paul N. Hilfinger, and Robert Firth. > Do you actually know any of these people? Not a one, I participated in ANSI X3H3 computer graphics programming language standards efforts, not the Ada ANSI X3J-whatever standards efforts. > Have you heard of them? Jean Ichbiah, Jean-Loup Gailly, John Barnes, Paul Hilfinger, and Robert Firth are familiar names to me, the rest are not. I twice owned a copies of John Barnes textbooks on learning Ada programming, but they were lost to me in the disintegration of one marriage or another. > Maybe very clever, experienced > programmers sometimes seem like > "computer language theorists" to > programmers who are not quite so > clever or experienced. Nice try, but with 41 years programming experience and a wealth of algorithmic inventions to my name, you'll have to find someone else to slander. I merely lack the level of specific formal education in computer language design that make most of what the OP thinks of as "simple principles" look simple when reduced to standards-ese, or look simple when trying to convince other mid-level and junior programmers that Ada is an "easily understood language". If that claim were true, the years of language lawyering that have filled and continue to fill comp.lang.ada would not have been necessary. In the case, Ada is conceptually an extremely difficult language to understand, and I'm not sure why that needed to be so. Pascal [from which Ada mostly derives], at least in its early incarnations, is in contrast supremely easy to understand from the practicing programmer's viewpoint, which made it a splendid learning langauge and quite fair in practice as well. > When you are programming away on your > Intel-based or Sparc-based computer, > do you often pause to contemplate the > foolishness of the chip designers, who > followed principles that are not > entirely clear to you? Or do you just > learn how to use the results of their > work? Well, no, I bothered to learn why and how the chips work the way they do, down to the gate level originally, in higher level chunks more recently. [Not all that many people in the world have ever memorized the logic gates and software running therein of an entire computer, but I am one of that few [not that it was all that complicated a computer: the guidance computer for the Polaris Missile; and I did it as a way to gain promotion in my military specialty, not for the sheer joy of the task]]. [Do you often answer months-old articles and expect current answers? Are you not often disappointed?] xanthian.