Re: The Red Language

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

Michael said

<<So. Would the Red language be "doable" with today's compiler
technology? Would it (might it) be superior to present-day
languages?

Or do we already HAVE the Red language in our midst?
(Red = Intermetrics = STT = Ada95)  ;^)>>


No, Ada 95 is nothing like Red (at least not in the respects where
Red and Green most importantly differed). The genesis of Ada 95,
despite your rather confused equation, is that first a requirements
document was written, which was very much foucssed on the revision
requests that had been received. As one of the authors of this document,
I cannot remember Red coming up at any point during writing the requirements.

Then, given these requirements, a contract was let to Intermetrics to design
to these requirements, and at that point the design effort, lead by STT, but
involving many others of course, was a process of realizing these requirements,
which of course were only guideposts, nothing like a full language design.

But even in this later design process, I can barely remember Red being
considered as a source of inspiration. Most of the critical missing 
capability in Ada 83 was also missing in GNAT, so mostly Red/Green
differences were simply not relevant to the process.

Do not assume that everyone agrees with the idea that Red was superior,
but too hard to implement. I personally *always* preferred Green from
a technical point of view, even allowing for the fact that Green was
far more polished and complete than Red.