Re: Embedded Keynote Speaker Mentions Ada

[Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org>]

In the last exciting episode, Jim Gurtner <jgurtner@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Is this an Ada put down?
>
> Dan Saks said in a keynote speech at Embedded Systems Conference in
> Boston on Tuesday (Sept. 14):
>
> "In embedded programming, learning a less-popular language like Ada or
> Eiffel is critical not so much because it is a marketable skill but
> because it helps programmers see what is possible with more mainstream
> languages like C, C++ or Java." 

This is much the same as when Eric Raymond (the guy that wrote the
essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar") wrote:

"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you
will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a
better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never
actually use Lisp itself a lot."

- Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"

Understanding the additional abstractions is useful whether you use
them directly or not because they allow you to perceive additional
ways of viewing the way computers do things.

- Knowing enough about APL to know that there's some merit to having
  vector functions or to having a "reduce" abstraction will lead to 
  building more powerful systems

- Understanding relational algebra leads to looking at data access in
  a more declarative/applicative manner, rather than just the "network
  model" (which is where OO tends to point people)

- Knowing Ada exception handling will lead to looking for ways to
  apply it, even if only partially, in other languages.

- Likewise, understanding rendezvous may help in designing
  applications, whether you get to use it or not.

- The disciplines of _describing_ strong typing of parameters,
  as in Eiffel's "Design by Contract," are useful whether enforced
  by the langage or not.
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