Re: Lack of formal syntax undermines Ada

On 13/04/2008 20:34, in article son404d3f74k4g2pu5h4rlppm69cmj175a@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"John McCabe" <john@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
....
> HOCUS sounds familiar, and it could have been in Lilybank Gardens, but
> I can't remember off-hand. I think it was quite a small room in an
> older building.

Yes, that was LBG/HOCUS.

I wrote HOCUS, actually, to make Unix usable for beginners.
I still have the source, which is 90% shell commands.
In 1996 we used a cut-down version of it to deliver
our first Ada95 labs, which had Sun compile/execution servers
with Macs as file management/editing thin clients (they replaced
the file-related commands of HOCUS).

>>> As a matter of interest, have I
>>> already asked you if you could remember who we might have been taught
>>> by? It was an old, miserable guy who wore tweed a lot as far as I can
>>> remember.
> 
>> I can think of one or two candidates (neither being me!).
>> Was he tall and gaunt; or shorter, moustached, and a heavy smoker?
> 
> Probably shorter, but I don't remember him having a moustache. Whoever
> he was, he didn't like people throwing paper aeroplanes around :-)
> There's a vague chance his name was something like Watt.

8-)
From your description, it definitely was not David Watt,
who is tall and something of a snappy dresser.
It was probably Ron Mills.
-- 
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk