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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Why C++ is successful
Date: 1998/08/02
Message-ID: <dewar.902030297@merv>#1/1
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Date: 1998-08-02T00:00:00+00:00
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Jay says

<<Actually, I am pretty sure Ada83 that was supposed to have garbage collection
in non-embedded environments as there were official features to turn "automatic
storage reclaimation" off.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a hard implementation
requirement and in the DOD world of $5000 toilet seats....   This is another
example of DOD mismanagement of Ada and its sad to admit in retrospect
that the Ada scoffers were right (DOD and competent language management
do not mix).  Russia leaving the cold war business didn't help Ada either.
Oh well, the time to get on the Ada bandwagon was 15 years ago.
>>


No, that is wrong, Ada83 was not "supposed" to have GC, it was supposed to
ensure that GC was practical if it was needed. As for DoD mismanagement,
this is a truly peculiar statement. Any Ada vendor would have been happy
to provide GC to a customer who wanted it and was willing to pay. In fact
my memory at ALsys was we never had EVEN ONE customer who was interested
enough in GC to even ask about it. The same is true in our experience with
GNAT.
No customer has ever asked for GC, and they certainly have asked for many
other things.

You can of course use conservative GC's of various varieties with most
Ada 83 and Ada 95 compilers. I never bumped into an Ada application that
took advantage of this possibility.

I think that the DoD would have been way out of line dictating what particular
implementation characteristics were needed in implementations of Ada, instead
of leaving this up to the individual projects.

The fact that users of Ada did not ask for Jay's pet-feature-of-the-day has
nothing to do with mismanagement, and everything to do with actual requirements.

Please note that, as you of course know, I have always considered GC a
very important feature in high level languages. I find it disappointing
that it has been impossible to interest either Ada users or the Ada 9X
design process in GC, but that's the way it was. I had hoped to get GC as
at least a recommended part of the IS annex, but even there, I found zero
support on the relevant committee, and indeed, seeing the lack of interest
in GC among Ada users, I think the Ada 9X design had the right idea. Enable
GC at the design level, but do not attempt to impose it.