The actual modern Ada ended up being reasonable and the conservative design is justified. And it's no more verbose than Java anyway. Is there any writeup on the discrepance between the hysteria and the real thing?
I think it was blowback to the hype. Rust, sadly, seem to be bound to end likewise as the rustaceans enthusiastically endorse AI-driven rewriting of legacy DoD C code into Rust. What can go wrong there?
Ygg2 · 1h ago
> And it's no more verbose than Java anyway.
That's damning with faint praise. Java is one of the most verbose languages.
> Rust, sadly, seem to be bound to end likewise as the rustaceans enthusiastically endorse AI-driven rewriting of legacy DoD C code into Rust.
Sure, some people want to speed up and/or automate conversion C to Rust, they are a minority. Going for 1 to 1 translation is going to be problem fraught with issues.
phtrivier · 3h ago
I wish the author had provided a link to the full reviews - I suspect they were more substantial.
As a aside : let's thank the FSM that Dijkstra never had access to social media - I suspect he had the kind of "abrasive" personality that would have made him probe to wasting his time and intellect arguing with all the randos of the world.
And you don't think he would adjust like Linus for example?
enriquto · 3h ago
maybe. But that would be so sad! (as it is with Linus)
johnisgood · 37m ago
I need more context, I do not understand anything apart from the quote on the bottom, which is just a mere expression of dislike of something without any reasons provided...
> Ada was such a mess that I shuddered at the thought that Western security would depend on it and that I would feel much safer if the Red Army were to adopt it as well.
Replace "Ada" with "Rust" or anything else (like Dijkstra's favorite programming language). It does not explain the why.
cyco130 · 51m ago
The green proposal was the one that got picked up to become Ada by the way. Red was the runner-up.
ggm · 8h ago
I have it in my mind that Wirth floated modula/modula-2 variants into the early round of Ada candidates but I can find nothing evident.
My back reasoning to it's truth is threefold:
1) He did a residency at York university relating to pascal and modula in teaching CS. That's why my first uni language was pascal. (He'd just left)
2) York used pascal and modula heavily across the Ada specification window
3) York got an SERC or other funding contract to implement a multi pass Ada compiler on BSD Unix.
Which would mean (if true) Dijkstra's comments basically slated all of the candidate languages, and by implication Wirths language views, given he'd worked on the IFIP programming language specification process and was so strongly associated with pascal variants of imperative programming languages.
adrian_b · 32m ago
Modula was first described in March 1976.
Modula-2 is a much later language, from 1982, 3 years after the publication of Ada, and this is the version of Modula that has become well known. The first version of Modula has seen very little use, if any.
The first version of Modula has been conceived by Wirth while he took a sabbatical year during which he stayed at Xerox PARC. There he was impressed by the language Mesa, which already had modules.
In my opinion, Mesa was a programming language vastly better than any Modula version. Wirth however thought that Mesa was a too big language, so he attempted to design a simple language that offered some of the benefits of Mesa.
In 1976, when Wirth has designed the first (not very good) version of Modula, the DoD requirements specification process that has resulted in Ada had already passed through 3 stages: STRAWMAN (1975-04), WOODENMAN (1975-08) and TINMAN (1976-01), though the first requirements document that was close to the final language, IRONMAN, would be published only next year, in 1977. (The final DoD requirements document was STEELMAN, in 1978-06, and Ada was published one year later, in 1979-06.)
Therefore Modula had no influence on Ada.
After implementing the detailed DoD requirements, the remainder of Ada was influenced by IBM PL/I, by Algol 68, by Pascal from Wirth, and also by Xerox Mesa, the source of inspiration for Modula. Any resemblance between Ada and Modula comes either from Pascal or from Mesa, which have been sources of inspiration for both Ada and Modula.
Xerox Mesa has been a very innovative programming language, but it is seldom mentioned today, despite being the origin of many features added to later languages, e.g. the less usual loop syntax used by Python (with ELSE; Mesa used a better keyword, FINISHED).
Unfortunately some of the best features of Mesa are not supported at all or only badly supported in most modern languages.
> Haskell, though not perfect, is of a quality that is several orders of magnitude higher than Java.
I'm pretty sure he would assess Python a few orders of magnitude lower than Java. Probably warranting the need for a log scale for the quality of programming languages.
hello_computer · 20m ago
His magician archetype was out-of-control, but at least he had taste.
f1shy · 4h ago
Does somebody have more context about it? What were the other colors? This says absolutely nothing to me.
amszmidt · 4h ago
> What were the other colors?
ADA was designed around a competition between four companies, to make it unbiased the proposals got named by colour.
Honeywell was Green, Intermetrics was Red, SofTech was Blue, and SRI was Yellow. There where no other colors.
Surac · 3h ago
That settles it for now and forever. Men are only able to distinguish 6 colors.
I think it was blowback to the hype. Rust, sadly, seem to be bound to end likewise as the rustaceans enthusiastically endorse AI-driven rewriting of legacy DoD C code into Rust. What can go wrong there?
That's damning with faint praise. Java is one of the most verbose languages.
> Rust, sadly, seem to be bound to end likewise as the rustaceans enthusiastically endorse AI-driven rewriting of legacy DoD C code into Rust.
Sure, some people want to speed up and/or automate conversion C to Rust, they are a minority. Going for 1 to 1 translation is going to be problem fraught with issues.
As a aside : let's thank the FSM that Dijkstra never had access to social media - I suspect he had the kind of "abrasive" personality that would have made him probe to wasting his time and intellect arguing with all the randos of the world.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD660...
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD661...
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD662...
> Ada was such a mess that I shuddered at the thought that Western security would depend on it and that I would feel much safer if the Red Army were to adopt it as well.
Replace "Ada" with "Rust" or anything else (like Dijkstra's favorite programming language). It does not explain the why.
My back reasoning to it's truth is threefold:
1) He did a residency at York university relating to pascal and modula in teaching CS. That's why my first uni language was pascal. (He'd just left)
2) York used pascal and modula heavily across the Ada specification window
3) York got an SERC or other funding contract to implement a multi pass Ada compiler on BSD Unix.
Which would mean (if true) Dijkstra's comments basically slated all of the candidate languages, and by implication Wirths language views, given he'd worked on the IFIP programming language specification process and was so strongly associated with pascal variants of imperative programming languages.
Modula-2 is a much later language, from 1982, 3 years after the publication of Ada, and this is the version of Modula that has become well known. The first version of Modula has seen very little use, if any.
The first version of Modula has been conceived by Wirth while he took a sabbatical year during which he stayed at Xerox PARC. There he was impressed by the language Mesa, which already had modules.
In my opinion, Mesa was a programming language vastly better than any Modula version. Wirth however thought that Mesa was a too big language, so he attempted to design a simple language that offered some of the benefits of Mesa.
In 1976, when Wirth has designed the first (not very good) version of Modula, the DoD requirements specification process that has resulted in Ada had already passed through 3 stages: STRAWMAN (1975-04), WOODENMAN (1975-08) and TINMAN (1976-01), though the first requirements document that was close to the final language, IRONMAN, would be published only next year, in 1977. (The final DoD requirements document was STEELMAN, in 1978-06, and Ada was published one year later, in 1979-06.)
Therefore Modula had no influence on Ada.
After implementing the detailed DoD requirements, the remainder of Ada was influenced by IBM PL/I, by Algol 68, by Pascal from Wirth, and also by Xerox Mesa, the source of inspiration for Modula. Any resemblance between Ada and Modula comes either from Pascal or from Mesa, which have been sources of inspiration for both Ada and Modula.
Xerox Mesa has been a very innovative programming language, but it is seldom mentioned today, despite being the origin of many features added to later languages, e.g. the less usual loop syntax used by Python (with ELSE; Mesa used a better keyword, FINISHED).
Unfortunately some of the best features of Mesa are not supported at all or only badly supported in most modern languages.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44048775
I'm pretty sure he would assess Python a few orders of magnitude lower than Java. Probably warranting the need for a log scale for the quality of programming languages.
ADA was designed around a competition between four companies, to make it unbiased the proposals got named by colour.
Honeywell was Green, Intermetrics was Red, SofTech was Blue, and SRI was Yellow. There where no other colors.