:: Re: [DNG] OT: some ancient programm…
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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] OT: some ancient programming language history
Le 26/07/2015 20:19, T.J. Duchene a écrit :
>
>
> On 07/26/2015 11:08 AM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>
>>
>> I also had a long discussion with some of the guys in charge of the
>> ADA project -- they really wanted the security that comes from
>> completely automatic storage management but they couldn't afford to
>> have their weapons systems stop for garbage collection,
>>
>> I told them exactly what the trade-offs were -- too what extent they
>> could have their cake and eat it too. In the end they decided that
>> they could afford neither the language complexity of the
>> garbage-collector-free storage management schemes, nor the garbage
>> collection delays. I'm not sure to what extent they ended up avoiding
>> dynamically allocated storage in the first official language
>> definition.
>>
>>
> ADA! I remember that! I've not used it in the better part of 20
> years. Nicely designed language for its time - and very strict.
> Having learned C in advance of ADA, I never liked its Pascal style
> operators.
>
> Too bad the only one who really uses it in the US is the government.


     Ada is not an acronym, it's after the first name of the first 
person who wrote programs, the daughter of Byron, the english poet.


     Ada is used in many places where human life is at stake: eg. 
planes, missiles, Eurocontrol (the european air cirulation regulation), 
the driver-less metro in Paris. The initial version was Ada83. There 
have been some revisions since. Add95 was a major one and the last is 
Ada2012.


     The affectation operator is := instead of = in C, and the 
comparison are = (instead of ==) and /= instead of != . The bad choice 
of operators, together with other tricks is probably the main source of 
bugs in C programs.


     Didier