macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis) (02/20/86)
In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener (weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role of Ada: <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> > ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to > be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available > unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. Do you have some documentation for your claims? > This includes [LANL, LLL, NSA, NASA, Lockheed]. ... Ada is required only for (most) DoD embedded computer systems. No one is trying to impose Ada for scientific (LANL, LLL) applications or in research in general. NSA -- who knows? NASA has selected Ada as the programming language for the Space Station. Lockheed will be using Ada in most future embedded systems. > Considering that all the biggies run UNIX on Cray-2s and are--if > they are intelligent--moving towards workstations that will talk > with the Cray-2s quite easily (read UNIX workstations), it looks > like that a large portion of DoD programming will move towards C, > not Ada. ... There is no contradiction between Unix and Ada. Indeed, Intermetrics developed and runs their Ada compiler (Byron Ada) under UTS (Amdahl's Unix for the 370 architecture) -- as well, of course, as under other hosts and targets (Note: I consult for Intermetrics). C was used for some bootstrap RTS modules which would otherwise have been written in machine language; they are being rewritten in Ada. > Incidentally, LLL and NSA both have their own private languages. This is one of the raisons d'etre of Ada. The Air Force, the Navy, the Army, etc. ALL had their own languages, many of them based on Algol 58 (yes, 58, not 68). If the LLL and NSA languages have some special attributes which makes them particularly suited for their users, I would imagine they will continue to be used. If, on the other hand, they are simply not-invented-here growths, I would imagine they would fade away as more and more facilities (packages, tool) become available for Ada. > ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded > way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And > to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize > many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] Insults and condescension don't help your argument. -s Macrakis@Harvard.{Harvard.EDU,ARPA,uucp,csnet} @Harvunxh.bitnet
weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (02/21/86)
Perhaps the following belongs to e-mail only, but I'm willing to apologize for the gratuitous Ada-bashing. I was rather stunned at the attitude that "Ada does it that way so it must be right" in the posting I had ridiculed. In article <728@harvard.UUCP> macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis) writes: >In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener >(weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role >of Ada: > <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> >> ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to >> be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available >> unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. > >You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. >Do you have some documentation for your claims? It comes from talking to numerous people who work at such places over the years. Condescension and derision were the usual attitude, and I was passing it along. Comments like "Didn't DoD have the same hopes for COBOL? Hardy Har Har." were typical. I should emphasize this attitude does not reflect on the language so much as on the DoD == fubar equation. >> ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded >> way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And >> to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize >> many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] > >Insults and condescension don't help your argument. Then I'll say it politely: the mathematically boneheaded way of doing integer division does not seem to have much inherently logical reasons for being adopted, yet it is nearly universal in computer languages. The article I was replying to asked why hadn't I or others who care about the matter given input to the language when we had the chance. I suspect that such input was ignored--the discussion on integer division has mostly re- vealed "idiotic reasons" for supporting the traditional implementation--and I wouldn't be surprised if they followed the tradition. But it seems Ada has both 'mod' and 'rem': but the posting I was responding to ('rem' is the winner in the great integer division debate since Ada does it that way) seemed to imply that it only had 'rem'. So I stand corrected. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (02/21/86)
Perhaps the following belongs to e-mail only, but I'm willing to apologize for the gratuitous Ada-bashing. I was rather stunned at the attitude that "Ada does it that way so it must be right" in the posting I had ridiculed. In article <728@harvard.UUCP> macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis) writes: >In a discussion of division standards, Matthew P. Wiener >(weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU) brings up some questions about the role >of Ada: > <11610@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> >> ...many of the largest defense companies/contractors consider Ada to >> be a complete joke and have no intention of making it available >> unless their programmers start screaming and begging for it. > >You appear to have a strange model of programming language choice. >Do you have some documentation for your claims? It comes from talking to numerous people who work at such places over the years. Condescension and derision were the usual attitude, and I was passing it along. Comments like "Didn't DoD have the same hopes for COBOL? Hardy Har Har." were typical. I should emphasize this attitude does not reflect on the language so much as on the DoD == fubar equation. >> ... Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose the boneheaded >> way of doing integer division for idiotic reasons anyway. ... [And >> to net.lang.ada readers: sorry for picking on Ada, but I realize >> many of you have no choice in the matter anyway.] > >Insults and condescension don't help your argument. Then I'll say it politely: the mathematically boneheaded way of doing integer division does not seem to have much inherently logical reasons for being adopted, yet it is nearly universal in computer languages. The article I was replying to asked why hadn't I or others who care about the matter given input to the language when we had the chance. I suspect that such input was ignored--the discussion on integer division has mostly re- vealed "idiotic reasons" for supporting the traditional implementation--and I wouldn't be surprised if they followed the tradition. But it seems Ada has both 'mod' and 'rem'. The posting I was responding to, by asserting that 'rem' is the winner in the great integer division debate since Ada does it that way, seemed to imply that it only had 'rem'. So I stand corrected and the former paragraph is moot. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720