donald (04/02/83)
The following is an after-dinner speech that was given by J.J. Horning
at a DoD-sponsored sponsored workshop on programming language design
and implementation at Ithaca in 1976. This was in the early stages
of the search for a "Common High Order Language", which we now know
as Ada, and the speech is a comment on the Tinman requirements.
(for those interested, the proceedings may be found in Springer-Verlag's
Lecture Notes 54). The rest (Ironman, Steelman, Green, Preliminary Ada,
Revised Ada, New Revised Ada, New New Revised Ada, etc.) is history.
Fourscore and seven weeks ago
ARPA brought forth upon this community a new Specification
conceived in desperation, and dedicated to the proposition
that all embedded computer aplications are equal.
Now we are engaged in a great verbal war,
testing whether that Specification, or any specification so
conceived and so dedicated, can long be endured.
We are met on a great Battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a Proceedings of that Battle,
as a final resting place for those Papers
that here gave their Ideas that that Specification might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot
authorize - we cannot enforce - this Specification.
The brave men, military and civilian, who funded this Specification,
have authorized it far above our poor power to add or subtract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did elsewhere.
It is for us the experts, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,
- that from these honored papers we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion
- that we here highly resolve that these papers shall not have been
written in vain
- that this Specification, under DoD, shall have a new birth of reason
- and that programming
of common problems,
by common programmers,
in common languages,
shall not perish from the earth.
declare use TEXT_IO;
begin
COL(40); PUT("Don Chan"); NEW_LINE;
COL(40); PUT("utcsrgv!donald"); NEW_LINE;
end;