What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Shark8]

Coming across Robert Dewar's lecture on Ada's Past, Present, and Future; he mentioned the four languages in Ada's history -- I haven't seen the documents [and wouldn't know where/how-to get them] and started wondering what would have happened if Red had won? How would Ada be different?

Also for Blue, though he mentions the thought of that was "it's too weird."

Suppositions and wild guessing welcome.


Link: http://www.adacore.com/adaanswers/lectures/ada-past-present-and-future/

PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue I'd love to know.

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Bill Findlay]

On 17/07/2013 02:08, in article
38846385-9884-46d5-8f58-6cf5c6049bbd@googlegroups.com, "Shark8"
<onewingedshark@gmail.com> wrote:

> Coming across Robert Dewar's lecture on Ada's Past, Present, and Future; he
> mentioned the four languages in Ada's history -- I haven't seen the documents
> [and wouldn't know where/how-to get them] and started wondering what would
> have happened if Red had won? How would Ada be different?
> 
> Also for Blue, though he mentions the thought of that was "it's too weird."
> 
> Suppositions and wild guessing welcome.
> 
> 
> Link: http://www.adacore.com/adaanswers/lectures/ada-past-present-and-future/
> 
> PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue
> I'd love to know.

I had copies of all the colours at one time, but alas no longer.
They are significant historical documents; they should be scanned and put
online if anyone still has them.

Is my memory failing or was there a Yellow as well?

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
use  surname & forename;

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Shark8]

On Tuesday, July 16, 2013 9:54:51 PM UTC-6, Bill Findlay wrote:
> On 17/07/2013 02:08, in article
> 
> 38846385-9884-46d5-8f58-6cf5c6049bbd@googlegroups.com, "Shark8"
> 
> > Coming across Robert Dewar's lecture on Ada's Past, Present, and Future; he
> > mentioned the four languages in Ada's history -- I haven't seen the documents
> > [and wouldn't know where/how-to get them] and started wondering what would
> > have happened if Red had won? How would Ada be different?
> > 
> > Also for Blue, though he mentions the thought of that was "it's too weird."
> > 
> > Suppositions and wild guessing welcome.
> > 
> > Link: http://www.adacore.com/adaanswers/lectures/ada-past-present-and-future/
> > 
> > PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue
> > I'd love to know.
> 
> 
> I had copies of all the colours at one time, but alas no longer.
> They are significant historical documents; they should be scanned and put
> online if anyone still has them.

Indeed; that's part of the reason I was looking. 

> 
> Is my memory failing or was there a Yellow as well?

There was; but Mr. Dewar made Yellow seem rather boring (basically just Pascal w/ a few new features atop). So WRT "what if another color had won?" only Red and Blue seem to be worth asking about as having interesting answers.

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 7/17/2013 12:31 AM, Shark8 wrote:

> There was; but Mr. Dewar made Yellow seem rather boring (basically just
>Pascal w/ a few new features atop). So WRT "what if another color had won?" only
>Red and Blue seem to be worth asking about as having interesting answers.
>

What about the color green? I ask becuase the RM I have dated 1983 is colored
dark green. I bought at a book sales show long time ago.

http://12000.org/book_collection/HTML_LOC/images/17685f.png

That is the oldest Ada book I have.

--Nasser





  

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Simon Wright]

"Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> writes:

> On 7/17/2013 12:31 AM, Shark8 wrote:
>
>> There was; but Mr. Dewar made Yellow seem rather boring (basically
>>just Pascal w/ a few new features atop). So WRT "what if another color
>>had won?" only Red and Blue seem to be worth asking about as having
>>interesting answers.
>>
>
> What about the color green? I ask becuase the RM I have dated 1983 is
> colored dark green. I bought at a book sales show long time ago.

"Ada is Green" was the cry at the time -- in other words, the Green
proposal was the one that won the competition to become Ada.

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 7/17/2013 1:20 AM, Simon Wright wrote:

>> What about the color green? I ask becuase the RM I have dated 1983 is
>> colored dark green. I bought at a book sales show long time ago.
>

> "Ada is Green" was the cry at the time -- in other words, the Green
> proposal was the one that won the competition to become Ada.
>

I see. This explains why many of the older Ada books have green color
as main color for the book cover.

--Nasser

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 07/16/2013 06:08 PM, Shark8 wrote:
> Coming across Robert Dewar's lecture on Ada's Past, Present, and Future; he
> mentioned the four languages in Ada's history -- I haven't seen the documents
> [and wouldn't know where/how-to get them] and started wondering what would
> have happened if Red had won? How would Ada be different?

Red did win. The team behind Red was effectively in charge of the Ada-95 
revision, led by some guy named Tucker Taft, whoever he is. Jean Ichbiah, 
whoever he was, was so disgusted by what they did to the language that he 
resigned as a Distinguished Reviewer.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"I don't know why I ever come in here. The
flies get the best of everything."
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
102

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Strawman]

> PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue I'd love to know.

Absolutely fantastic pages here:

http://www.iment.com/maida/computer/redref/index.htm

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Randy Brukardt]

"Shark8" <onewingedshark@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:38846385-9884-46d5-8f58-6cf5c6049bbd@googlegroups.com...
>PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue 
>I'd love to know.

My recollection is that they were all published in ACM's SIGPLAN Notices. At 
least, that's where I saw them back in the day (in the University of 
Wisconsin's Computer Science Library). I suspect you could get digital 
copies from ACM, but they wouldn't be cheap.

                            Randy.

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Shark8]

On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 12:58:51 AM UTC-6, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> 
> Red did win. The team behind Red was effectively in charge of the Ada-95 
> revision, led by some guy named Tucker Taft, whoever he is. Jean Ichbiah, 
> whoever he was, was so disgusted by what they did to the language that he 
> resigned as a Distinguished Reviewer.

I remember reading that the Red team did do the brunt of the 9X revision, though this is the first I've heard about Ichbiah resigning in disgust. The addition of tagged-types was fairly well-done, I think (as in consistent w/ records to a fairly high degree) but I don't know of anything that was so egregious as to cause disgust... except, perhaps, one thing that [IIRC] Randy mentioned in a discussion of generics: they cannot be instantiated solely upon the formal parameters matching.

Do you know what things, in particular, he didn't like about the language's direction?

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Shark8]

On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 3:46:44 AM UTC-6, Strawman wrote:
> > PS: If anybody knows where I can get a copy of the docs for Red and/or Blue I'd love to know.
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely fantastic pages here:
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.iment.com/maida/computer/redref/index.htm

Thank you!
Excellent looking link so far. :D

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 18/07/2013 07:48, Shark8 a écrit :
> I remember reading that the Red team did do the brunt of the 9X
> revision, though this is the first I've heard about Ichbiah resigning
> in disgust. The addition of tagged-types was fairly well-done, I
> think (as in consistent w/ records to a fairly high degree) but I
> don't know of anything that was so egregious as to cause disgust...
> except, perhaps, one thing that [IIRC] Randy mentioned in a
> discussion of generics: they cannot be instantiated solely upon the
> formal parameters matching.
> 
> Do you know what things, in particular, he didn't like about the
> language's direction?

This happened at the Salem meeting. There was a huge debate about a very
minor syntactic point (I think it was more or less about using "tagged"
vs. "class", not sure). Both Tuck and Jean made passionate arguments
about this, and eventually Tuck won by one vote. When he saw the result,
Jean packed his stuff, said "Ada and I, it's over", and left the room,
not to be seen again. (Note: I was sitting next to him when this happened).

My personal interpretation is that his leaving was not really caused by
this very minor point, nor by any "disgust", but by the question of
whether Ada 95 was Ichbiah's language with some modifications by Taft,
or if it was becoming Taft's language. When it turned out to be the
second option, he left. He was not the kind of guy who would accept
sharing the fame.

-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
http://www.adalog.fr

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 07/17/2013 10:48 PM, Shark8 wrote:
>
> I remember reading that the Red team did do the brunt of the 9X revision,
> though this is the first I've heard about Ichbiah resigning in disgust. The
> addition of tagged-types was fairly well-done, I think (as in consistent w/
> records to a fairly high degree) but I don't know of anything that was so
> egregious as to cause disgust... except, perhaps, one thing that [IIRC] Randy
> mentioned in a discussion of generics: they cannot be instantiated solely
> upon the formal parameters matching.
>
> Do you know what things, in particular, he didn't like about the language's
> direction?

In an interview, Taft said, "As it turned out, Jean and I had quite different 
views on how to design the object-oriented features of the updated language, and 
he ultimately left the project when it was decided to follow the design team's 
recommended approach."

(https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/223388/a-z_programming_languages_ada/?pp=3)

My recollection is that Ichbiah said the revision was creating "Ada with null." 
He wanted a notation that used the reserved word "class":

class type T is record ...

He objected to "tagged" as being about the way the concept was implemented, 
while "class" would be about the concept. He also objected to the placement of 
"tagged", and that this would result in too many reserved words in a row in 
things like "is abstract tagged limited private". And, as his phrase "Ada with 
null" would indicate, he objected to the "with null" notation for a type that 
added no new information to its parent. He preferred

class type Child is new Parent;

He wrote an open letter when he resigned explaining why, but I haven't had any 
luck finding it on line.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"I unclog my nose towards you."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
11

Re: What if Red had won? [Or Blue?]

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 18 Jul 2013 08:52:48 +0200, Jeffrey Carter  
<spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> a écrit:
> My recollection is that Ichbiah said the revision was creating "Ada with  
> null." He wanted a notation that used the reserved word "class":
>
> class type T is record ...
>
> He objected to "tagged" as being about the way the concept was  
> implemented, while "class" would be about the concept.
He was partly wrong, as the tagged union is one of the existing ways to  
formally express the concept, and is not limited to implementation  
wordings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_union



-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University