Re: Why no exception hierarchy ?

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Jean says:                               

">The Foreword says, "This second edition cancels and replaces the first
>edition (ISO 8652:1987), of which it constitutes a technical revision."

This is the Soviet practice of thinking you can "cancel history" "

Gosh, I guess when Jean talks about PC's he means a 4.77 MHz machine using
an 8088, except perhaps in the SU (which I notice itself has been canceled)
where no doubt the practice is to use PC to mean a somewhat different 
machine.

Superceding old technology with new technology has nothing to do with
rewriting history, it simply has to do with technological progress.
The ISO standard for any language (COBOL, Fortran etc.) always means
the most recent version.

We really have two usages to consider here:

  Popular usage. When people say Fortran, they typically mean the latest
  version they are using. Right now for example, that is mostly Fortran
  77, but is rapidly switching to Fortran 90.

  Official usage. As dictated by the standards body. In this usage, Ada
  definitely means the current standard and no other.

Note that in neither usage does COBOL refer to the original version. When
the word Fortran is used, no one means the original Fortran (this was true
even in 1965, when Fortran already meant Fortran-2).

So I am afraid that Jean's understandable insistence that Ada mean only
the language he originally designed won't have much effect.

For Ada, the informal popular usage is mixed. Already when someone asks
a question about Ada (undesignated) on this newsgroup, answers come in
assuming the meaning was Ada 95, and as time goes on that will be more
common.

So perhaps it is premature to point out that eventually Ada will mean
only Ada 95 in popular usage, but it is certainly the case that using
Ada to mean Ada 83 is going to be increasingly confusing.

So, to repeat my second suggestion, I think it is a good idea if everyone
on this newsgroup clearly says Ada 83 or Ada 95 to make the disctinction
clear. We will know that Jean means Ada 83 when he says Ada, but then he
doesn't need to ask beginner's questions about Ada 83 anyway :-)