[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Tim Sneddon]

Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/18 9:14 PM, Arne Vajh??j 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.
> 

Gotta have the last word, eh? ;-)

I think Scott's point was pretty clear. I got it, Arne got it... The
language becomes so large that nobody is able to use features to their
full potential.  Instead programmers end up using only little bits,
sometimes in ways that could be done better by knowing the whole
language.

See, I like languages so learning a behemoth like PL/I doesn't bother
me.  Instead I quite like it.  I can however, see another point of
view where it might be too much.

>> 
>> Neither can they prevent third party tools from doing so.
>> 
>> Such tools exist. Example SPARK.
> 
> Note the name is not Ada.
> 

That still doesn't actually alter Arne or Scott's point though, does
it?

Regards, Tim.