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From: Captain Obvious on 3 Jun 2010 05:22
PJB> That's the question!
PJB> Does the reading make the man, or does the man choose the reading?

I think for this purpose human brain can be visualized as a finite state
machine:

next_state_of_mind = F(previous_state_of_mind, a bit of experience),

Where experience can be anything, including book reading.

So, it is true that books change a person, but effect depends on previous
experience.
Moreover, it might be important what order do you read books in.

So it is like dynamic, chaotic system, and it is not possible to predict the
behaviour looking only on some part of inputs.

From: Nick Keighley on 3 Jun 2010 06:23
On 3 June, 09:42, Giovanni Gigante <g...(a)cidoc.iuav.it> wrote:

> I see that there are several books on Ada in Erik's library. Some days
> ago I happened to look at the debian language shootout benchmarks, and I
> noticed that Ada is really fast. I also learned that the language had
> the standard update recently (2005).
> I don't know nearly anything about Ada, except the usual rumors
> (verbose, strict discipline, formerly mandated by DOD) which are
> probably as rich and precise as "Lisp is slow" and "Lisp is for AI".
> So I was wondering: (a) Is ada still alive (in the sense of: is ada more
> or less alive than common lisp)? (b) Is ada still worth learning (for a
> lone european lisper such I am)?

this link implies there's still life
http://www.ada-europe.org/

and this page lists some projects that use it
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html

both Boeing and Airbus seem to be heavy users


--
"High Integrity Software: The SPARK Approach to Safety and Security"
Customers interested in this title may also be interested in:
"Windows XP Home"
(Amazon)

From: joswig on 3 Jun 2010 06:55
On 3 Jun., 10:42, Giovanni Gigante <g...(a)cidoc.iuav.it> wrote:
> Btw,
> I see that there are several books on Ada in Erik's library. Some days
> ago I happened to look at the debian language shootout benchmarks, and I
> noticed that Ada is really fast. I also learned that the language had
> the standard update recently (2005).
> I don't know nearly anything about Ada, except the usual rumors
> (verbose, strict discipline, formerly mandated by DOD) which are
> probably as rich and precise as "Lisp is slow" and "Lisp is for AI".
> So I was wondering: (a) Is ada still alive (in the sense of: is ada more
> or less alive than common lisp)? (b) Is ada still worth learning (for a
> lone european lisper such I am)?

Luckily a prominent Lisp expert explains the real background of Ada
and its design:

http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-04.html

From: Giovanni Gigante on 3 Jun 2010 09:02
joswig(a)corporate-world.lisp.de wrote:

> Luckily a prominent Lisp expert explains the real background of Ada
> and its design:
>
> http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-04.html
>

Funny :)
Still, my heuristic was very simple: if the archlisper Erik Naggum was
(apparently) interested in Ada, perhaps I should, too?
From: Tim Bradshaw on 3 Jun 2010 10:18
On 2010-06-03 14:02:17 +0100, Giovanni Gigante said:

> Still, my heuristic was very simple: if the archlisper Erik Naggum was
> (apparently) interested in Ada, perhaps I should, too?

I suspect Erik bought books on things so he could learn enough about
them to decide if they were interesting. I do that, anyway.

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