🚀 go-pugleaf

From ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning):
> don't you think that there is a possibility that the interest in ada
> is mostly market driven?  further, isn't there a distinct probability
> the reason that people are only now beginning to seriously talk about
> ada is that in spite of the heavy market drive (i.e. dod money),
> reasonable ada compilers have only recently (last 3 years) become
> available on machines that people are interested in using?  what does
> it mean if a language is so complex that it takes the resources of the
> dod nearly 10 years to force the development of even moderate quality
> compilers for common development platforms?

    Initially, compiler vendors concentrated on getting their compilers
    validated, efficiency be damned.  This is an inevitable effect of the
    rigorous standardization and the prohibition of subsetting.  Once the
    validated compilers began to appear (circa 1985), the focus then
    turned toward improving efficiency; much excellent work on global 
    optimization techniques is now paying off in the form of the current
    "second-generation" Ada compilers.  It is the growing non-DoD interest 
    in Ada which has motivated vendors to target "machines that people are
    interested in using", as you put it.  

    Certainly from a commercial perspective, Ada has been an easy language
    to invest in because of the stability and size of its market.  However,
    I tend to disagree with the proposition that interest in Ada is mostly 
    a consequence of DoD $$$; I know of many people (including myself) who
    have been highly interested in Ada since roughly 1980.  As the most 
    advanced member of the Algol family, Ada is the obvious choice for
    those who prefer that group of languages (the general progression
    being Algol -> Pascal -> Modula-N -> Ada). 

> compare this development with the concurrent development of simpler
> languages that include the important features without including the
> bureaucratic drek.  examples of such languages include modula [23],
> c++, ml, common lisp and others.  

    First, this depends upon your perception of the "important features".
    Ada provides much that other languages don't give you; I view this as
    an advantage.  Analyses of Ada which have been done in response to the
    people who have claimed it to be too large show that very little can
    be trimmed from Ada without reducing the available functionality, so
    the question condenses to "Are you willing to assume that you'll never
    need the things that a smaller language simply cannot provide?".

    As for "bureaucratic drek", I'm not entirely certain what you're 
    referring to; I don't have to write memos to the Ada Joint Program
    Office, and they don't send them to me.  But AJPO does guarantee me
    that what I write in Ada here will compile on any other Ada compiler,
    and I consider that a very important service.

> compare also the effort required. does 2 or 3 orders of magnitude 
> simpler implementation mean something?

   If I'm looking for a language to implement as a student compiler
   project, perhaps.  If I'm looking for a language to write in, I
   only care about whether or not I can find a decent compiler; given 
   that many of them now exist, it's simply a matter of indifference.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu