Judy.Bamberger@SEI.CMU.EDU (04/11/90)
>>> Date: 10 Apr 90 17:24:55 GMT >>> From: cica!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!hubcap!wtwolfe@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Bill Wolfe) >>> Subject: Recent CACM "viewpoint" article >>> Message-ID: <8676@hubcap.clemson.edu> >>> >>> Such inaccurate or incomplete information on Ada, *especially* in >>> a publication like CACM, needs to be straightened out very quickly; >>> I hope that in addition to any discussion that might take place >>> here in comp.lang.ada, someone from the SEI will write to CACM to >>> straighten out these two regarding the feasibility (yes) and the >>> general advisability (no) of automatic Fortran-to-Ada translation, >>> as well as the alternative strategy of using pragma Interface, and >>> that someone from NUMWG, 9XWG, or both will write CACM regarding >>> the other technical points raised by Bailey. >>> >>> >>> Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu As an employee of the SEI, I would respectfully like to remind the readers of this newsgroup that "SEI" translates into "Software Engineering Institute" - *NOT* "Ada Engineering Institute." While we do some Ada work here, we primarily do software engineering, education, and technology transition, which all use a variety of languages (Ada, C, LISP, ..., Z, VDM, ..., English, American, Hebrew, ... ). I would encourage everyone to read the aforementioned Viewpoint (CACM, April 1990). Pardon me, but I found it a delightful piece, and can see some of us writing Ada pieces on BOTH sides of the debate in 2010 (30 years after the Ada standard was first born). That will be jolly fun! This debate reminds me of the timeline that was published in Abacus a few years back, predicting the death of COBOL and FORTRAN every 5 years or so ... if you haven't seen that, it, too, is delightful. Final observation - In the FULL CONTEXT of the ENTIRE letter in Viewpoint (which, to remind us all is just that - a *point of view* ... and there are MANY of those in this world - mebbe we should learn to be more tolerant of divergence?), I personally found nothing terribly "wrong" with what was said - however, I might have chosen other words to avoid some of the conclusion-jumping that seems inherent in this community. In any case, read; enjoy!
billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (04/12/90)
From Judy.Bamberger@SEI.CMU.EDU: >>>> I hope that in addition to any discussion that might take place >>>> here in comp.lang.ada, someone from the SEI will write to CACM to >>>> straighten out these two regarding the feasibility (yes) and the >>>> general advisability (no) of automatic Fortran-to-Ada translation, >>>> as well as the alternative strategy of using pragma Interface, and > > As an employee of the SEI, I would respectfully like to remind the readers of > this newsgroup that "SEI" translates into "Software Engineering Institute" - > *NOT* "Ada Engineering Institute." While we do some Ada work here, we > primarily do software engineering, education, and technology transition, An example of which can be found in SEI-87-TR-9, "Ada Adoption Handbook: A Program Manager's Guide", by John Foreman and John Goodenough, which on page 52 (Section 7.4, Translating Languages) gives a good analysis of automatic translation as a general strategy for Ada-language transition. The authors of this SEI Technical Report would be in a good position to write CACM regarding the points raised above (>>>> section...), since they clearly have already considered the question in considerably greater detail than have either of the two CACM "viewpoint" authors. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu