[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/19/2018 8:45 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/19/18 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> Ada95 is a much bigger language than Ada83.
>>
>> And Ada83 was enormous.
>> We had a Data General at gatech which could handle about 50 simultaneous
>> Pascal compiles, or one Ada compile.
>>
>>> And as with other language that got redesigned then
>>> I believe that such a redesign is not as clean as it
>>> would have been if it had been done so from the beginning.
>>
>> It was the PL/1 of the 1980s.  So big that everyone programmed in a
>> subset and so nobody could read anyone else's code...
> 
> First, there are no Ada Subsets.  The owners of the language
> specifically prohibit it.

The owners of a language can only prohibit vendors producing compilers
implementing a sub set.

They can not prohibit companies to have coding conventions that
mandate a limited subset of the language.

Neither can they prevent third party tools from doing so.

Such tools exist. Example SPARK.

> Second, it is a typical item designed by committee.  BY the
> time it was done  the people responsible for its creation in
> the first place (The US Air Force) refused to use it even
> with the DOD mandate.

Formal committees with members from many vendors and users
tend to produce big complex languages, because everybody
want "their stuff" included.

Arne