Re: New Book: The School of Niklaus Wirth

Our moderator wrote:
> [Ada was designed by competitive bid. The winner was the "green"
> language designed by a group in France. -John]


To be exact, the initial proposal was a competitive bid over a set of
requirements (which evolved from "strawman" to "ironman"), the green
team was not 100% french (the leader was), it was a group set up by
Honeywell Bull. Color codes where used to avoid discrimination between
proposals based on non-technical things.


From this initial proposal to the Ada 83 standard an international
group was the set up with strong leadership (ie: the design team
leader had respect from the team plus veto and last word on design
issues - not your typical committee).


And this standard was revised in 1995 after an international call for
comments, the design team leader then was a member of the company that
was behind the "red" proposal to the original Ada bid. I don't know if
it's why some Ada 83 standard edition have green letters on the cover,
while Ada 95 editions have red ones ;-).


A timeline is available at URL:
<http://www.cs.fit.edu/~ryan/ada/ada-hist.html>


--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

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