Jewish Fairy Tales

Even more troubling were reports of incredible software productivity from US projects using languages like Lisp, APL, Prolog, Smalltalk and Forth. Entire robotic planning systems with natural language and graphics interfaces were programmed by just one or two people in Lisp. Reams of PL/I code were replaced by a single line of APL. Prolog obsoleted a generation of Cobol programmers. Smalltalk and Logo were taught to children, and raised the spectre of a 12-year-old outproducing a dozen beltway bandits. Perhaps most troubling of all was Forth, with its ability to very quickly program substantial real-time systems that took insignificant amounts of memory.

Although Ada would also severely impact American software productivity, it was felt that--just as cancer-fighting chemotherapy nearly kills healthy tissue while it kills tumors--the healthier US economy would be better able to bear the severe burden of an unproductive software industry than the Soviet economy could. Thus, while American geeks were inferior to Soviet geeks, our Elbonian hordes could beat their Mongolian hordes.