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

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

[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.

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

[N.B. Hedd]

stt@spock.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft) writes:

>In article <nbhCCnzpL.1D8@netcom.com> nbh@netcom.com (N.B. Hedd) writes:

>> ... [other similar silly statements about Hoare deleted]

>This is the strangest post I have ever seen.

Thank you, it wasn't easy. I just figured, if Ted Holden was impervious
to logic and sound reasoning, perhaps he could be nuked by a form of
argumentation more in keeping with his own approach, to wit: ad hominem
attacks, distortions and outright lies, hyperbole, specious parallels,
and mindless blather. I'm well aware of Hoare's contributions: he was one
of the Great Men we learned about in CS. Hoare is great enough, in fact,
that he was willing to admit a mistake (his early concerns about Ada) and
correct for it in his more recent pronouncements [I half suspect this was
due to the rise of C++ providing him with a basis for comparison...]. You'll
note that Ted Holden, on the other hand, is so wedded to his skewed
worldview that the fact of Hoare's conversion is conveniently ignored.

Hopefully, my tactic has so befuddled and confused Ted that he will go away.
(I can dream, can't I?)
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
John R. Moore is an idiot.

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

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!spool.mu.edu!olivea!news.bu.edu!inm]

In article <nbhCCnzpL.1D8@netcom.com> nbh@netcom.com (N.B. Hedd) writes:

>Ted, Ted, Ted--before using Hoare as an authority on language design, can
>you please enumerate for me the languages that Hoare himself has designed
>that have proven to be commercial successes? 'Cause personally I can't
>think of anything significant he's done in the field of language design.

> ... [other similar silly statements about Hoare deleted]

This is the strangest post I have ever seen.  Hoare was the inspiration
for Pascal, which in turn provided inspiration for Ada, Eiffel, Modula,
etc.  Of course I rarely find myself in agreement with Ted Holden's posts,
but I certainly agree with him that Hoare is one of the greats
(perhaps the greatest) in the history of programming language design.

You should read Structured Programming (Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare -- AP 1972),
and any history of programming languages.

In any case, the issue is not whether Hoare thought Ada was too complex
in 1980 (perhaps it was "ahead of its time" in sophistication, having
tasking, generics, exceptions, packages, overloading, user-defined 
operators, etc.).  Clearly Ada 83 is not ahead of its time in 
sophistication/complexity anymore, when compared with Fortran 90,
C++ 3.0/4.0, Cobol 9X, etc.  The programming problems have gotten 
more complex, and the mainstream systems programming community 
has generally embraced the idea of adding more features 
to the language if by so doing it significantly simplifies 
the construction of correct, robust, maintainable, and extensible programs.

A while back there was a bit of a debate about small "academic"
languages versus large "commercial" languages.  This really has
nothing to do with academia versus industry.  As was pointed out,
many very large, long-lived systems have been built in academia (e.g.
Mach, Ingress, Andrew File System, PQCC, etc.).  However, these were
not generally written in what are traditionally called "academic" languages.
Instead they were written in C, Bliss, etc. -- traditional (low-level) 
systems programming languages.  In fact, it was experience in academia
and industry with such large, long-lived systems that created much of
the impetus for adding object-oriented features to systems programming
languages.

There is still an important academic contingent interested in "small"
languages, partly out of the general principle that "simpler is better
if it works" (which I certainly agree with), and perhaps more importantly
out of an interest in languages that are conducive to formal semantic
analysis.  Of course, the great challenge for this academic
contingent interested in formal semantic analysis is either to:

 a) convince the builders of large, long-lived, "real-world" systems that 
    these "small" languages are sufficiently expressive and productive 
    to allow their use on big systems; or to

 b) generalize the principles learned in analyzing small languages
    and apply them to the large, "real world," "messy" languages being
    used by the mainstream.

Personally I see the current academic efforts focused on small languages as
being analogous to the kinds of small, isolated experiments that are performed
during the early period of any area of scientific study.  I hope
that once these small languages are well understood, the fundamental
principles learned will be able to be generalized to handle the
languages of the "masses."

On the other hand, I know many of the researchers in these areas believe
their small languages are already sufficiently expressive and productive,
and because of their formal semantic foundation should be adopted by
all programmers seriously interested in building robust, reliable systems.

This difference of opinion will probably continue for quite some
time, during which the "well founded" languages will probably grow
more sophisticated and less restrictive (e.g. SML), and 
the "mainstream" languages will probably
acquire more complete and well founded definitions.  Certainly
for Ada 9X, in developing the "Integrated Language Specification"
document, we tried to be as formal as possible, while remaining
in English.  We have carried most of the formality over to the actual 
Reference Manual, though some of the most pedantic material has been relegated
to the "Annotated" Ada 9X Reference Manual, available for perusal
by formal language theorists, language lawyers, compiler implementors,
and other readers interested in maximum precision at the occasional
expense of easy readability.

S. Tucker Taft    stt@inmet.com
Ada 9X Mapping/Revision Team
Intermetrics, Inc.
Cambridge, MA  02138

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

[Alex Blakemore]

In article <nbhCCnzpL.1D8@netcom.com> nbh@netcom.com (N.B. Hedd) writes:
> before using Hoare as an authority on language design, can
> you please enumerate for me the languages that Hoare himself has designed
> that have proven to be commercial successes?

There are many other measures for success than the marketplace,
especially in academia where the search for truth and knowledge
is supposed to be the goal.

> 'Cause personally I can't
> think of anything significant he's done in the field of language design.

They didn't give him a Turing award by accident.

He made important contributions to program language design, when it
was an emerging unstructured field (not like now:-) He developed some
of the first techniques for formally defining the semantics of
programs and programming languages - and for proving them correct.
His ideas led to a more disciplined approach for language development,
and programming methods (such as structured programming).

Even if we cant feasible prove correctness of most programs, knowing
what techniques are amenable to formal reasoning helps lead to better
languages and programs.

He made contributions to the field of concurrent programming (CSP and
monitors) that hold up well today and inspired "commercial languages"
like Ada and Ada9X.  Occam has had reasonable success as the language
for programming transputers, and its about as close to CSP as you can get.

He helped shape our field and point it in a direction based more upon
engineering, mathematics, logic and science - and away from one based
totally on ad hoc heuristics and emotion.  Much of what is good in Ada
builds upon work done by Tony Hoare (and many others) in the early years.

He may have done other things. This is just what I remember off the top
of my head.  What original contributions have you made to the field?

> He's just some old fart who ran out of original ideas a couple of decades
> ago and who's only real claim to fame these days is an idiotic speech

We will all be old farts someday (hopefully) and that speech
is far from his claim to fame. In fact, its probably low down in the noise leve
l.
I'm glad to hear that he changed his mind about Ada, and sorry to
see how misused that speech has been.

> it's not as if Hoare is trumpeting the virtues of
> C/C++. If he was alarmed by Ada because he thought it was too complex to
> be proven correct and therefore unsuitable for controlling nuclear reactors,
> do you honestly think he'd deem C++ or C SAFER? 

I also seriously doubt he would have much good to say about C or C++.
I wish he would speak his feelings about C in a public forum, but
after watching the effect of his cautionary speech about the complexity of EARL
Y
Ada designs, I wouldn't blame him for being reluctant to take a public stand
about a programming language again.

> John R. Moore is an idiot.

The John Moore I know is definitely not, but I imagine its a different
person.  I hope you know more about this man than you do about
professor Hoare.

P.S. I enjoyed you Ada to C++ translator posting though.

-- 
Alex Blakemore       alex@cs.umd.edu        NeXT mail accepted
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Without an engaged and motivated human being at the keyboard,
the computer is just another dumb box."      William Raspberry

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

[N.B. Hedd]

Ted, Ted, Ted--before using Hoare as an authority on language design, can
you please enumerate for me the languages that Hoare himself has designed
that have proven to be commercial successes? 'Cause personally I can't
think of anything significant he's done in the field of language design.
He's no Ichbiah. He's no Meyer. He's no Kernigan or Richie. Hell, he's not
even a Bjarne.

He's just some old fart who ran out of original ideas a couple of decades
ago and who's only real claim to fame these days is an idiotic speech 
attacking Ada but proposing no extent language as an alternative for
the sorts of dangerous, mission-critical, absolutely-cannot-fail systems
for which Ada was designed.

And besides all that, it's not as if Hoare is trumpeting the virtues of
C/C++. If he was alarmed by Ada because he thought it was too complex to
be proven correct and therefore unsuitable for controlling nuclear reactors,
do you honestly think he'd deem C++ or C SAFER? What color is the sky on
your planet?
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
John R. Moore is an idiot.

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

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!cs.umd.edu!aft]

In article <1414@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|> In article <1993Aug19.120801.18134@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, blaak@csri.toro
nto.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
|> *Someone, somewhere writes:
|> 
|> *>>One of the supposed beauties of Ada is that it cannot ever change.  The A
da 
|> *>>which Hoare claimed was unfit for any use with serious consequences is th
e
|> *>>same Ada which is out there now, to the best of my understanding.
|> 
|> *Regardless of what Hoare thinks about Ada now, what were his original
|> *complaints about it?

Ted must have seen a somewhat different speech than I've got in my Turing
Lectures book.  In his 1980 Turing Lecture, Hoare talks about his involvement
in the ALGOL language design.  That's the main thrust of his speech and
13.5 of its 16 pages (in my copy).  At the end he talks about the problems
that ALGOL 68 had due to its size and complexity.  He goes on to indicate
that he sees Ada taking the same course as ALGOL 68.  His main concern is
with the safety of a large, complex language... Subsequently he has
indicated that it didn't turn out so bad.

|> That the language itself was far too large for starters...  Hoare correctly
|> noted that the big success stories of recent years, C and Pascal, included
|> in the base language only those things which figured to be used in every
|> program which ever got written using them, or very nearly only those, and
|> that everything else and the kitchen sink, rather than being part of the
|> language, got put into libraries to be linked in by the user who needed
|> them, only when he needed them.  C doesn't even include (in the language)
|> any notion of IO and, while this may have appeared extreme at one time,
|> it appears far-sighted now.  There is simply no reason why a program which
|> uses MS-Windows should also contain all of the code for stdio.h, X Windows,
|> MS-DOS screen IO (conio.h), etc. etc., when it doesn't use them.

Hoare doesn't mention C at all...  only Pascal and ALGOL.

|> Hoare noted that the language was far too complex, and that users were
|> going to spend more time working around Ada than solving their own 
|> problems;  in theory, most programmers are being paid to do the later and
|> not the former.

NOPE.  Doesn't say this at all...

|> And there were a number of other things.  It's not as if he gave a long
|> speech on another topic and then, at the end, said "Gee!  this Ada thing
|> looks like a bad idea..."

He did in fact give a long speech on another topic (ALGOL) and then related
the bad things that happened in ALGOL 68 to what might happen in Ada "today"
(where "today" was 1980).

I think the best summary of his feelings is the statement (remember in 1980),
"For none of the evidence we have so far can inspire confidence that this
language has avoided any of the problems that have afflicted other complex
language projects of the past."  The language did change a bit between
1980 and 1983 :-)

|> Were that the case, I could easily imagine his being convinced somehow or ot
her
|> to change his mind.  In fact, however, the entire speech was on the topic
|> of Ada, it was a hell of a long speech, and there was a buildup which took
|> into account a number of predecessor languages which failed for the same
|> reasons which Ada has failed for, and this included most notably PL/1.

Pure, unadulterated BS.  The speech was on ALGOL.  PL/I was never mentioned.
His concern with Ada was genuine, but it totalled only 5 written paragraphs.

|> In the speech, Hoare very clearly laid out what should be guiding principals
|> in the design of programming languages, and Ada was a kind of an ultimate
|> opposite example to everything which Hoare figured was right.

Not true.  Hoare does give the principals which he based the design of
ALGOL on.  He does not relate this to Ada anywhere.  He does comment that
a language without subsets should be made small.

|> So, assuming the people aren't simply lying in claiming that he has since
|> come around to being an Ada admirer, your guess is as good as mine, but
|> I am simply not able to believe that he simply was convinced that he had
|> been wrong.  That would imply that everything he had ever learned or
|> believed about computer science prior to 1980 had been 100% in error,
|> and that he'd have been better off selling used cars for a living prior
|> to that time, and only starting work in computer science AT that time.

Well, Ted, since he expressed a concern and hadn't passed final judgment --
the language wasn't complete yet and wasn't implemented for many years to
come.  I find it ironic that this message which seems to have many
"factual short-comings" ends accusing others of lying...

|> I figure they probably tied him to a tree and forced him to listen to
|> rapp music until he succumbed, but that's ONLY a conjecture.

|> Ted Holden      Ada is to computer science
|> HTE             As rapp is to music

-- 
Christopher A. Warack, Capt, USAF
Computer Science Department, US Air Force Academy

cwarack@kirk.usafa.af.mil                (719) 472-2401

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

[news]

In article <1993Aug19.120801.18134@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, blaak@csri.toronto
.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
*Someone, somewhere writes:

*>>One of the supposed beauties of Ada is that it cannot ever change.  The Ada 
*>>which Hoare claimed was unfit for any use with serious consequences is the
*>>same Ada which is out there now, to the best of my understanding.

*Regardless of what Hoare thinks about Ada now, what were his original
*complaints about it?

That the language itself was far too large for starters...  Hoare correctly
noted that the big success stories of recent years, C and Pascal, included
in the base language only those things which figured to be used in every
program which ever got written using them, or very nearly only those, and
that everything else and the kitchen sink, rather than being part of the
language, got put into libraries to be linked in by the user who needed
them, only when he needed them.  C doesn't even include (in the language)
any notion of IO and, while this may have appeared extreme at one time,
it appears far-sighted now.  There is simply no reason why a program which
uses MS-Windows should also contain all of the code for stdio.h, X Windows,
MS-DOS screen IO (conio.h), etc. etc., when it doesn't use them.

Hoare noted that the language was far too complex, and that users were
going to spend more time working around Ada than solving their own 
problems;  in theory, most programmers are being paid to do the later and
not the former.

And there were a number of other things.  It's not as if he gave a long
speech on another topic and then, at the end, said "Gee!  this Ada thing
looks like a bad idea..."

Were that the case, I could easily imagine his being convinced somehow or other
to change his mind.  In fact, however, the entire speech was on the topic
of Ada, it was a hell of a long speech, and there was a buildup which took
into account a number of predecessor languages which failed for the same
reasons which Ada has failed for, and this included most notably PL/1.

In the speech, Hoare very clearly laid out what should be guiding principals
in the design of programming languages, and Ada was a kind of an ultimate
opposite example to everything which Hoare figured was right.

So, assuming the people aren't simply lying in claiming that he has since
come around to being an Ada admirer, your guess is as good as mine, but
I am simply not able to believe that he simply was convinced that he had
been wrong.  That would imply that everything he had ever learned or
believed about computer science prior to 1980 had been 100% in error,
and that he'd have been better off selling used cars for a living prior
to that time, and only starting work in computer science AT that time.

I figure they probably tied him to a tree and forced him to listen to
rapp music until he succumbed, but that's ONLY a conjecture.



-- 
Ted Holden      Ada is to computer science
HTE             As rapp is to music

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

[Raymond Blaak]

Someone, somewhere writes:

>>One of the supposed beauties of Ada is that it cannot ever change.  The Ada 
>>which Hoare claimed was unfit for any use with serious consequences is the
>>same Ada which is out there now, to the best of my understanding.

Regardless of what Hoare thinks about Ada now, what were his original
complaints about it?

Cheers,
Ray
blaak@csri.toronto.edu