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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657
X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public
X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657
X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public
X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657
X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public
From: bengt@softwell.se
Subject: Re: Is there a language that Dijkstra liked? (was: Re: Software
 landmines (loops))
Date: 1998/09/18
Message-ID: <bengt-1809982205290001@sl56.modempool.kth.se>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 392513475
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
References: <6rf59b$2ud$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
 <l5HC1.6840$wN.1856764@news.giganews.com> <6rfra4$rul$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
 <35DBDD24.D003404D@calfp.co.uk> <m3ogt3qgca.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>
 <6sbuod$fra$1@hirame.wwa.com> <904556531.666222@miso.it.uq.edu.au>
 <6sgror$je8$3@news.indigo.ie> <6sh3qn$9p2$1@hirame.wwa.com>
 <Oi4H1.219$qj1.315418@newsread.com> <6simjo$jnh$1@hirame.wwa.com>
 <35eeea9b.2174586@news.erols.com> <6sjj7n$3rr$1@hirame.wwa.com>
 <35f055a5.1431187@news.erols.com> <6sjnlu$83l$1@hirame.wwa.com>
 <o1fH1.543$495.132579351@newsreader.digex.net> <6skfs7$2s6$1@hirame.wwa.com>
 <gwinn-0309982042490001@d8.dial-4.cmb.ma.ultra.net>
 <35F252DD.5187538@earthlink.net> <6t4dge$t8u$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
 <6t5mtp$4ho$1@news.indigo.ie>
 <gio+van+no+ni+8-1609980034390001@dialup26.tlh.talstar.com>
 <35FFE58C.5727@ibm.net> <YnSL1.651$pB3.2769531@news1.atlantic.net>
 <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Mime-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-09-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk>, Markus Kuhn
<Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>Rick Smith wrote:
>> Of the comments attributed to Dijkstra, I have never heard a comment
>> that was favorable toward any language! Is there a language that Dijkstra
>> liked?
>
>I thought that Dijkstra wrote years after his famous criticism on Ada,
>which basically killed interest on Ada in the academic community for
>many years, a quite nice foreword for an Ada 83 textbook by Jean Ichiba.
>I guess, his aversion against Ada were softened once he saw what
>monsters more recent languages such as C++ have become, compared
>to which Ada in Dijkstra's criteria should be a very nice language. I
>never understood his criticism that Ada is much too complex, and
>attribute it just to his inexperience with language specifications
>written down as ISO standards, because today even the C 9X standard
>is longer and much more difficult to read than the Ada standard. If

Perhaps he had had a look at the Scheme standard, and then thought that
anything more complex would also have to be more powerful to be
acceptable?
--