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From: stt@houdini.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)
Subject: Re: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
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Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 10:34:50 GMT
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W. Wesley Groleau (wgroleau@lear.mitre.org) wrote:
: sdm7g@elvis.med.Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski) wrote:
: > I .... was of the opinion that it was an unwieldy,
: >committee designed, kitchen-sink DoD-oriented language. 

: Ada is certainly not perfect, but at least it proves that 
: "committee-designed" doesn't automatically guarantee disaster.

Ada was not committee designed.  Neither Ada 83 nor Ada 95 was
designed by the "committee" approach.  Both used small design
teams, with a clear chief architect.  If you want to look
at committee design, look at PL/I, Cobol-85, Fortran-90, ISO/ANSI-C.
In fact, Ada may be the only programming language that has gone to 
international standardization without abandoning the design team approach.

Whether or not you like Ada, at least rest assured that both Ada 83
and Ada 95 were designed by small, cohesive design teams with a clear
vision of what they were trying to accomplish.  Whether they succeeded
is a separate debate (of course I am a bit biased on that one ;-).

: W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)                   INTERNET: wgroleau@lear.mitre.org
: The MITRE Corporation                        VOICE: 908-389-6596  (-6732)
: Eatontown, NJ 07724-1842                TEMP. HOME: 908-389-4800 ext. 311

-Tucker Taft  stt@inmet.com
Intermetrics, Inc.

