Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...

["Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>]

Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote in article
<4tkfqk$duc@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>...
> "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com> writes:
> >You say that it is the language of choice when software failure is
> >liable to cause loss of life or a very large lawsuit.  These
> >are very worthy attributes.  Given that this is the case, why
> >isn't it being used more universally for non-mission critical
> >software?
> 
> What I *don't* understand is why people are puzzled by the fact that it
> is hard to dislodge the first occupant of a niche.  (Not impossible, but

Hmmm ... that is a reasonable point, and when I started thinking about
it, C didn't get popular until the early 80s after almost 10-13 years
in existence. Ada was invented in 83 (was that the first version?), so
one could argue that Ada is on schedule to become popular, if it's going
to be.  Ada is so "under the radar" that it's hard to judge if its
popularity is increasing or not.

The other advantage C had was it was the language for the first
[popular] portable operating system, Unix.  This gave it a huge
advantage, since it captured the imagination of the "computer
underground" that gave the tool base a big boost.

Perhaps a better title for this thread is, "Why does *any* language
become popular?"

> Let me offer another example.  Suppose there were a programming language
> which is simple, far more expressive and powerful than C, as efficient
> as C, with a clean GUI library that has been designed so that programs
> will be the *same* on UNIX-X, Windows, and Mac, in which type errors and
> storage allocation errors and unintentional file overwriting errors and
> so on were impossible, yet remained expressive and comfortable.  And
> suppose that the implementation were free.

I would say that was hopelessly idealistic. :)

> Do you suppose it would take the world by storm?
> Well, _I_ use it, but no, Clean (for that is its name), has _not_ taken
> the world by storm, and I don't expect it will.

Never know; maybe you should write a free operating system in it. :)

> Conversely, the students I've supervised who've used Microsoft Access
> for projects tend to be mildly to *extremely* unhappy with the language
> side of it, but that doesn't hurt it in the market, does it?

It's amazing the vitriol that Microsoft can bring out.  I was just
reading a post somewhere else that this guy hated everything Microsoft
has ever done, but he really liked Access.  Sigh ...

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)