Re: Hoare's gripes about Ada (was Re: Ada and C++ ...)

[slinky.cs.nyu.edu!slinky.cs.nyu.edu!nobody@nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Reading N.B. Hedd's diatribe against Hoare (I saved a copy and will send it
to Tony, I am sure he will be greatly amused) reminds me of a wonderful line
in the movie "The Abyss" [at least this line is in the director's cut, it
might have got removed in the horrible cut down theatrical release]. When
the first person reports sightings of the aliens, no one believes her,
except a rather nutty conspiracy theory buff, who starts spouting really
far out explanations for what she has seen.

She says to him "Get off my side!"

I think many of us who support Ada could sympathize with that sentiment
in this case!

By the way, one of Tony's many important contributions is CSP, and it is
interesting to note that the rendezvous model in Ada is based on CSP. It
is essentially a generalization of CSP. A commercial language which used
CSP in purer form of course is Occam, the base programming language for
the Transputer, which was designed by Tony Hoare.

So, Mr Hedd, *please* get off our side! Thankyou.