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:a24:5353:: with SMTP id n80-v6mr8918019itb.6.1531149573472; Mon, 09 Jul 2018 08:19:33 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a54:4e94:: with SMTP id c20-v6mr4925302oiy.5.1531149573276; Mon, 09 Jul 2018 08:19:33 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.gegeweb.eu!gegeweb.org!news.redatomik.org!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed8.news.xs4all.nl!85.12.16.69.MISMATCH!peer02.ams1!peer.ams1.xlned.com!news.xlned.com!peer02.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!d7-v6no6546331itj.0!news-out.google.com!z3-v6ni6554iti.0!nntp.google.com!d7-v6no6546325itj.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2018 08:19:32 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <0001HW.20F38DBF004C10E470000C5E92CF@news.individual.net> 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> <0001HW.20F38DBF004C10E470000C5E92CF@news.individual.net> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Teaching C/C++ from Ada perspective? From: "Dan'l Miller" Injection-Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2018 15:19:33 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Received-Bytes: 5873 X-Received-Body-CRC: 223314475 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:53743 Date: 2018-07-09T08:19:32-07:00 List-Id: On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 7:34:09 AM UTC-5, Bill Findlay wrote: > On 8 Jul 2018, Dan'l Miller wrote > (in article<877d0a01-d342-433c-a541-3662736ae857@googlegroups.com>): >=20 > > On Sunday, July 8, 2018 at 1:39:34 PM UTC-5, Bill Findlay wrote: > > > On 8 Jul 2018, Dan'l Miller wrote > > > (in article<1ab5db5c-7892-40a8-ae36-ca1ec1168768@googlegroups.com>): > > > > > > > If there is one single root-cause reason that Ada failed to launch > > > > on the launchpad from, say, 1985 to 1993, it was this spurned-detes= t of Ada > > > > in telecom, not because of what was in or not in Ada, but because t= elecom > > > > was > > > > excluded from the selection process. > > > > > > There is another. > > > > > > The right-on then-dominant faction in CS academia, > > > who might have been expected to welcome a language soundly based on S= E > > > principles, > > > boycotted it without further consideration, simply because it origina= ted in > > > the DoD. My alma mater had an all-Ada83 computer-science department in the school of= engineering, fashioned out an older computer-technologist department. I w= ent through the final grandfathered era of the mathematics department teach= ing the computer-science-proper courses. Some universities and some school= s within otherwise-nonAda universities strongly embraced Ada as the definit= ive wave of the future (because they saw DoD's extant Ada mandate on the ta= ble, but not the forthcoming POSIX mandate from DoCommerce/GSA/NIST). > > I strongly suspect that was because of universities' desire for finding= favor > > in AT&T's eyes regarding coveted Unix licenses (pre-1984) ... >=20 > (a) We had a Unix licence since 1975, and a BSD licence since 1978. >=20 > (b) The people who negotiated licences were not the people who decided wh= ich=20 > language to teach. Yeah right. Letting the C fruit rot on the vine after the gardener careful= ly cultivated that coveted licensing relationship would not have gone over = very well. Troublesome heads of departments can easily be shuffled back into the deck.= Troublesome deans almost as easily. The nail that stands out shall be ha= mmered down. > So no, paranoia about AT&T had nothing to do with it. > Knee jerk aversion to the products of the DoD had everything to do with i= t. In the telecom industry of that era (i.e., the 2nd largest amount of realti= me embedded systems), that same* knee-jerk reaction was the basis of the mo= tivation for developing CHILL and C++ (and to some degree the unwavering de= dication to C as the workhorse at AT&T, and to some degree AT&T's PL/I divo= rce in 1969). * with respect to not-invented-here technology; not w.r.t. to any anti-war = anti-military stance that might have been present in universities post-Viet= nam > > Every college and university (or school/division/department therewithin= ) > > hitched their gravytrain wagons to 1 of those 3 during the 1980s. >=20 > In your experience, which was not ours. Yes, in my direct observation: it varied per campus in regional university= systems. It varied per school on the same campus. At times, it varied ev= en per department within the same school (e.g., math/hard-sciences versus c= omputer science). One might be fervently a VMS shop, the other fervently a= BSD shop. One might be a diversity shop (e.g., all of MULTICS, PRIMOS, VM= S, HP, DG, IBM-world), the other might be a monolithic shop (e.g., only VMS= ; only IBM-world). It all depended on who from corporate world was on the = curriculum-advisory committee for that university or campus, on who was don= ating what gratis, and on what network of other appointments the staff had = with research labs or defense contractors or other universities to mimic.