From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 2002:a24:640e:: with SMTP id t14-v6mr12081399itc.0.1531317934193; Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:05:34 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:aca:f495:: with SMTP id s143-v6mr6758231oih.7.1531317933916; Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:05:33 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!news.snarked.org!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!d7-v6no776530itj.0!news-out.google.com!l67-v6ni879itl.0!nntp.google.com!d7-v6no776529itj.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:05:33 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=47.185.195.62; posting-account=zwxLlwoAAAChLBU7oraRzNDnqQYkYbpo NNTP-Posting-Host: 47.185.195.62 References: <856189aa-fa00-4960-929e-174f352310ad@googlegroups.com> <2718c8d4-5f35-4fd8-a1aa-1e60069a7a5d@googlegroups.com> <39fce60c-9f56-42fb-b679-fa08810b00ee@googlegroups.com> <3701bf07-89a5-4cb0-a704-5aebb589ca79@googlegroups.com> <2f5e4ce0-94e8-4b94-9da7-045ec90a9b22@googlegroups.com> <9bb99fb4-b9c7-4516-97b5-da41466e96be@googlegroups.com> <1162d6bf-c226-4089-ae2e-870c7da9c80f@googlegroups.com> <2f5399b4-518b-4a2e-9941-2ae267d51309@googlegroups.com> <1ab5db5c-7892-40a8-ae36-ca1ec1168768@googlegroups.com> <0001HW.20F291E2002A542F70000C5E92CF@news.individual.net> <877d0a01-d342-433c-a541-3662736ae857@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <4cd5e912-04f6-4c3e-a19a-b19e8e59281d@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Teaching C/C++ from Ada perspective? From: "Dan'l Miller" Injection-Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2018 14:05:34 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:53769 Date: 2018-07-11T07:05:33-07:00 List-Id: On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 6:14:34 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote: > "Dan'l Miller" wrote in message=20 > news:877d0a01-d342-433c-a541-3662736ae857@googlegroups.com... > ... > >I strongly suspect that was because of universities' desire for finding= =20 > >favor in > >AT&T's eyes regarding coveted Unix licenses (pre-1984) and regarding > >POSIX (post-1986) was a big part of that. Sometimes AT&T's largess > >walked in through the frontdoor of the revenue-generating admissions=20 > >office: > > for approximately a decade, vast quantities of AT&T's white-collar=20 > > workforce > >was offered free tuition and lavish 18-month sabbatical to get their mas= ter > >degrees, fully paid for by corporate. Low thousands of employees signe= d=20 > >up. >=20 > That was certainly my experience. About half of my graduate school=20 > classmates (1980-83) were from Bell Labs. Not coincidentally, almost all = of=20 > the haardware at the University of Wisconsin ran some form of Unix. (The= =20 > outlier was the giant Unisys mainframe, which was rapidly being replaced = by=20 > VAXes.) >=20 > Of course, we had one professor who was interested in Ada, who got tapped= to=20 > teach one single semester of the compiler construction course, and thus u= sed=20 > an Ada-subset as the language for the class-project. And that happened to= be=20 > the semester that my roomate Isaac and I took the compiler construction= =20 > course, so we build a compiler for an Ada-subset. And my frustration with= =20 > the crappy languages available for the various early PCs that we worked o= n=20 > led to deciding to build and sell a compiler for a better language that w= e=20 > were familiar with. The rest is history. >=20 > So far as I know, nothing at UW ever used Ada again. Almost like it happe= ned=20 > solely to give me a career... Sometimes the stars align almost inexplicably so that we are each given a w= indow of transient opportunity to =E2=80=98live the dream=E2=80=99 in some = way, but only if we recognize it and reify it. Btw, Randy, thank you very much for =E2=80=A2all=E2=80=A2 that you do regar= ding Ada, now and through all the years; your fortuitous career actually is= elevating civilization. Randy, do you remember the name of that professor at UW who inadvertently b= rought your vision for your lifework into focus? (OP please take note: th= at is precisely what a most-excellent professor does for students.)