Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!ames!sgi!arisia!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Message-ID: <768@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 29 Nov 88 12:26:36 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <7724@boring.cwi.nl> <406@ubbpc.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 65

In article <406@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes:
> Here are some more opinions:
>
>Ada	  success-1?	failure-2?	small group (Ichbiah & Co.)?
					VERY LARGE GROUP.
>Algol-60 success-1	failure-2	small group
>Algol-68 success-1??	failure-2	committee
>C	  success-1	success-2	small group
>COBOL	  failure-1	success-2	committee
>FORTRAN  failure-1	success-2	small group
>FORTH	  failure-1	success-2?	small group
>LISP	  success-1	failure-2(this is changing)	small group
>Modula2  success-1	success-2	small group
>Pascal	  success-1	success-2	small group
>PL/I	  failure-1	failure-2	large committee

Ada came out of a long design process involving a lot of people.
There were at least 5 iterations of the *requirements* document
(StrawMan, WoodenMan, TinMan, IronMan, SteelMan).  Several teams
produced designs.  Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow drafts were
published in SigPlan notices.  After the first Ada spec was
produced, there was a review period when thousands of comments
were sent in from all over the world (e.g. a friend and I logged in
from Edinburgh over the Arpanet, scanned the comments on a particular
section, and found that our comment had already been made).  There
are few new ideas in Ada the way there were in the other languages.
(Why are CHILL, CLU, Alphard, LIS, to name but a few of the languages
which influenced Ada, omitted from the table?)

Again, Modula2 was not an innovative language.  It was basically a
clean-up of Modula.  (Same designer.  I'm not saying the designer
isn't innovative!)  I can think of no ideas in Pascal that don't
predate it, only limitations.  (Think of Simula 67, Algol W, CPL,
MadCap, ...)

PL/I is available on (some) UniSys machines, PR1MEs, VAXen, MIPSco
machines, ...  It was one of the first "algebraic" languages to
include halfway clean allocate/free, first well-known language to
have exception handling (other than COBOL's tests which must be
attached to the statements which might cause the exception),
generic procedures, array cross-sections, ...  [Many of these ideas
had been around, but PL/I put them together in one package which a
major manufacturer was committed to.]

How about Simula-67, which introduced the Class concept?
How about APL?  There are probably more people using Ada now than APL.

> I still maintain that this supports my earlier thesis: that committee-
>designed languages fail and individually-designed languages succeed.  Now that
>I have defined success and failure more clearly, more people might agree.

There are two issues:
(a) if a single designer can't hold the whole language in his head, there
    is little reason to expect someone using the language to do so.  With
    a lot of people putting things into a language, there is a fair chance
    that none of them will understand all the interactions.

(b) however, it is only possible to set up a large committee if there is
    already a lot of commitment to the language in advance (COBOL, Ada,
    Fortran 8X, even PL/I).  So such a design will have a lot of
    political momentum whatever its technical (de)merits.

The really awful thing is when you have a language designed by a small
group which is taken over by a committee who don't really understand it,
but keep me off _that_ subject...