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=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-07 19:37:25 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.cs.univ-paris8.fr!proxad.net!usenet-fr.net!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: "Alexander E. Kopilovich" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 06:29:58 +0400 (MSD) Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1081391720 92856 212.85.156.195 (8 Apr 2004 02:35:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 02:35:20 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: ; from "Dmitry A. Kazakov" at Wed, 07 Apr 2004 11:34:46 +0200 X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p7 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6832 Date: 2004-04-08T06:29:58+04:00 Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > > Why you, not being an American, use this luck-based theory, which is > > proprietary American? -:) > > I lost my faith in Karl Marx long time ago! (:-)) Did you also lost faith in Pythagorean theorem after studying non-Euclidian and differential geometries? I mean, do you believe now that relation between sides of a triangle depends upon luck only? -:) > BTW, there is no big difference between the "luck-based" theory and one of > Marin. Both agree that technical issues are irrelevant. The "luck-based" > theory stops here. Marin and you continue that probably managers have some > other [supreme, unknowable] reasons for their choices. Maybe. But this > changes nothing. And nothing techincal can be made about Ada to change > that. Because see above, technical issues are irrelevant. No. At least one major technical issue is relevant - it is anticipated lifecycle for a product. Long lifecycles are much less influenced by luck (whatever it means) than short lifecycles. And Ada was specifically designed for long lifecycles, and what is particularly important here - for anticipated long lifecycles. (Actually any kind of big volume suppresses influence of luck - it need not be specifically volume of time.) > So Java was in the right time at the right place. This argument - "right time at the right place" is as binded to the Luck theory (let's call it Luckism -:) as the progressive role of working class to Marxism. > > There was real matter that time - dot-coms were booming and there was > > widespread strong feeling about the need of easily distributable > > specialized clients for online shopping. > Mmm, that was 3 years or so later. 3 years or so later you could read about that in newspapers. Application programmers felt, knew and discussed that need at least 1 year before emergence of Java. > > And this was the trampoline for > > Java - applets. Then, after several years, dot-com bubble bursted, > > applets faded, > > And of course, we do not ask ourselves, why. Because that would lead us to > those unloved technical issues... Well, you are wrong here. We asked ourselves, and not *after*, but before applets faded - actually when Java specs were published. And at least for some of us (including me) the answer was clear and purely technical: JVM appeared a bad virtual machine - plainly bad, by its specs. All other things (including Java language itself) were secondary, but failure in JVM specs was certainly irrecoverable. Well, you may ask - why I think (or thought) that JVM is a bad machine - and I'll answer that if you saw enough various architectures you should see it yourself, but if not then I can't explain... I can say only one thing on this matter: if you look at JVM specs without prior knowlegde about its purpose you have no chance to guess that purpose, and that's enough. > Isn't it mysterious, how universities are promoting bad technologies? It was > C and UNIX before Java. Well, there are different kinds of promotion of technologies by universities. For example, I have nothing against Berkeley's promotions of C and Unix those times - because they really contributed to the techologies thus obtaining actual experience, and did not just propagate unproven and obviously suspectible things. Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia