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: 103376,319ef0454c7765d5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Why no exception hierarchy ? Date: 1995/04/07 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100070368 references: <3ksv4s$f9e@news.uni-c.dk> <1995Mar28.115614.9511@eisner> <3ls5sb$nl8@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1995-04-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 :-)