eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (08/02/84)
[] I used to sit on the ANSI committee for Pascal. I don't think there is an conspiracy by the DOD to push Ada down people's throats, they're (the DOD) not that well organized to do that. When we started our committee, we recognized several things: 1) most other ANSI languages committees were dominated by IBM (and companies with a great stake in IBM decisions). Many voted the way IBM voted. 2) some companies devote a full time STAFF to support their rep. The DEC rep was formerly the fulltime FORTRAN commitee rep prior to assuming her Pacal committee position. 3) members have widely varying backgrounds from compiler builders and language theorists to sales people and managers. 4) We expected to have a Standard within four-six months, the process took years. This was not because of conspiracy, but everybody is looking out for their self interests. Example, Wirth clearly admitted forgetting to put an OTHERWISE clause in his multiway CASE statement. Many wanted to rectify that problem, except those who had compilers lacking OTHERWISE or had implemented ELSECASE or similar notation. Are you goning to say that these people DON'T have compilers? While I don't agree with the DOD, I think they have not been pushing Ada down the throats of non-'embedded systems.' The C community has an advantage in that a greater proporition of the compilers out there are derived from the pcc. This was not the case of the Pascal P4 compiler. I hope they get their 'standard' out faster that we did. I wish them luck. Standards committees left a foul taste in my mouth after that experience. --eugene miya NASA Ames Res. Ctr.