[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/19/18 9:14 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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.

They can, however, prevent any subset using the term Ada which is
a registered trademark.

> 
> Neither can they prevent third party tools from doing so.
> 
> Such tools exist. Example SPARK.

Note the name is not Ada.

> 
>> 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.

Exactly.  The USAF wanted a practical language particularly
for programming flight systems (as you might have imagined)
they got a mouse designed by committee, otherwise known as
an elephant.

bill