Re: Lack of formal syntax undermines Ada

[John McCabe <john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk.nospam>]

"(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>> What, me and you? Weird! It's been a long time since I was on here
>> regularly though, so easily forgotten :-)
>
><http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/3885b7fd6
>6a1db28/e32a7e7bad2ebf54?lnk=st&q=#e32a7e7bad2ebf54>

Oh dear - only 5 and a bit years :-)

>>> Did you use cards on the ICL 2976 for your labs?
>> 
>> No. We used a VAX. ....

>Was that in a room with 16 terminals in Lilybank Gardens,
>using the "HOCUS" system on a VAX 11/750?

HOCUS sounds familiar, and it could have been in Lilybank Gardens, but
I can't remember off-hand. I think it was quite a small room in an
older building. It definitely wasn't anything like the Boyd Orr or
Rankine Buildings, and I don't remember it having been the main
building so....

>> As a matter of interest, have I
>> already asked you if you could remember who we might have been taught
>> by? It was an old, miserable guy who wore tweed a lot as far as I can
>> remember.

>I can think of one or two candidates (neither being me!).
>Was he tall and gaunt; or shorter, moustached, and a heavy smoker?

Probably shorter, but I don't remember him having a moustache. Whoever
he was, he didn't like people throwing paper aeroplanes around :-)
There's a vague chance his name was something like Watt.
 
>Our most recent effort:
><http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-Language-Design-Concepts-David/dp/04708
>53204/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208095483&sr=1-1>
>was re-set by the publisher, using our .doc files, in their "house style",
>and they managed to make it less legible, in my opinion, than our originals.
>Ho hum.
>
>At least it contains a fair account of Ada, showing its advantages,
>especially for concurrency, over the other languages covered.
>This despite opposition from the publisher and anonymous reviewers.
>It seems that complete ignorance of Ada is no bar to pontificating about it.