firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) (12/22/88)
Speaking of idiots... Please excuse the last post, about half of which was garbage caused by a combination of brain error and weird software. Sorry, sorry, and have a happy solstice.
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman) (03/26/90)
In pleading for an end to the language wars and hype on all sides, I think I went a bit too far and inadvertently dragged a few good names in the dust. I apologize to Stroustrup, Meyer, Kernighan and Ritchie, and whoever others' names I may have used. Ad hominem attacks ain't good, and I'm sorry I yielded to the temptation to name names. Look. We are all technical folks or we wouldn't be reading this group. A certain amount of self-promotion goes along with any invention. I think we, as good technical guys, need to try to distinguish between the promoters and the thing being promoted. There's a lot of good stuff in Ada, even if it did come from DoD and even if some folks got a little carried away with its promotion. Most of the real "hype" - by this I mean really exaggerated claims - has died down, at least from where I sit in Washington. I believe that most everyone is working in good faith to exploit the benefits of a language designed for commonality instead of dialects, and for stability instead of change. The residual hype we can ignore with impunity, I think, and get on with our technical business. I won't reiterate previous postings on the benefits of real standards - if you read 'em and agree, fine. If not, fine too. There are a lot of recent developments - especially in the O-O world - that I wish Ada had been prescient enough to incorporate in 1979. But I think these were really too experimental to have adopted at that time. Whatever Ada9X incorporates from all of this, let's try to give the folks a little credit for intelligence and good faith, and do the best we can to live with the result. There's a lot of good stuff in the other languages too. Let's stipulate that C, C++, Eiffel, and the others are worthwhile inventions. The group is called comp.lang.ada (or Info-Ada, if you read it on Internet). Let's try to stick to the subject. If you want to bring other languages in for comparison, I favor sober and thoughtful comparisons, with good examples, not shrill generalizations. I hope you agree. Apologies again for the hasty language yesterday; no personal slurs intended.