Talk:Mesa (programming language)

Very interesting. No mention of Dorado (is that the name of a xerox workstation? I thought mesa was first implemented on it)? What is the meaning and relevance of the last paragraph, about Ada? --drj

The Dorado was a high performance xerox workstation developed at Xerox PARC for internal use in the early 1980s. It was not marketed. Esnickell2 (talk) 16:51, 18 September 2009 (UTC) (Not citeable. Based on personal knowledge.)[reply]

It was the inspiration for Modula-2 when its author spent time with Xerox as an undergraduate. What? Niklaus Wirth was the author of Modula-2... and I think he was well past undergraduate by then! --NickelKnowledge

I have no problem with the connection, I was complaining about the undergraduate bit. --NK

The story I heard (hearsay, not citeable) is that Wirth took a sabbatical at some point at Xerox PARC. There he encountered Mesa, and after the end of his sabbatical requested permission to be able to use Mesa in the wild. When that was declined, he created Modula-2. (This information was 3rd-hand when I heard it from reliable sources in the 1980s. I include it here not as fact, but to guide others' search for citeable sources.) Esnickell2 (talk) 16:51, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well this is all very good. Someone wrote that cedar came before mesa, but http://www.parc.xerox.com/hist-lst.html claims it was the other way round, so I changed it. That also accords with my very vague 3rd or 4th info. Cedar was designed to interop more easily with C and Modula wasn't it? --drj

Mesa/Ada "elegance" - POV?

Ada is a far more verbose language and lacks Mesa's elegance. Is there a less opinionated way to say this? (Some people feel that...) - Eric 23:13, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you, and have deleted that bit, as it fails the NPOV test. "Elegance" is subjective, and does not belong properly to the field of computer science or an encyclopedia. RobLinwood 23:07, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Descendants

I moved some text around to separate information about the language from that about languages it has influenced. I feel that this makes the article more focused and clear by putting the most relevant information at the beginning, and by not viewing Mesa as a mere historical footnote. RobLinwood 23:12, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Link to Cedar programming language

The article has a link to Cedar programming language, but Cedar programming language currently just redirects to Mesa programming language — oops! As someone who has been trying to find out more about Cedar for many years, I find this really frustrating. I guess the "right" solution is for someone to turn Cedar programming language into a real article. Does anyone reading this know enough about Cedar to start work? I'll gladly help. —Chris Chittleborough 10:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ... that should of course be Cedar (programming language). Now that there's a copy of the closest thing Cedar had to a reference manual online here, I'll try to expand the coverage of Cedar. However, I'm not sure we'll have enough information for a separate article. CWC alias Chris Chittleborough 13:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DoD wanted Mesa for its High Order Language

The article currently says that

The United States Department of Defense approached Xerox to use Mesa for its "IronMan" programming language, but Xerox management turned them down. The Department of Defense instead created the Ada programming language.

We've had similar claims in this article for a long, long time, but never had a cite for it. I suspect it's an urban myth, and so should be removed. Comments, please? CWC 13:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Judging from recent good edits by 66.201.51.66 (whose ISP is based in Palo Alto, and who clearly has inside knowledge of Mesa), this is not an urban myth and should not be removed. It would be better to have a cite for it, though .... CWC 12:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To recent contributor

To the person who recently edited this article from IP address 66.201.51.66:

Thanks, that was good work.
I've left a message for you at here in case your IP address is static; if you haven't seen it yet, please read it and consider registering at Wikipedia, because we can always use more good editors.

Cheers, CWC 12:38, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Code snippets ahoy!

This article is lacking examples of Mesa code --Sigmundur (talk) 21:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yes, a 'hello world' would be nice --Alastair Rae (talk) 10:48, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]