From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,21960280f1d61e84 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "kevin cline" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? Date: 23 Jan 2007 13:36:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1169588206.234714.312650@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.8.57.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1169588219 4994 127.0.0.1 (23 Jan 2007 21:36:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:36:59 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20061206 Firefox/1.5.0.9,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) X-HTTP-Via: 1.1 ics_server.swacorp.com (ICS 2.3.0.0.16) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=208.8.57.2; posting-account=Thx6EwwAAAAirqf96i7UdETSL0vfyj5f Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8447 Date: 2007-01-23T13:36:46-08:00 List-Id: artifact.one@googlemail.com wrote: > Hello. > > I am a long time C programmer (10 years plus), having a look > at Ada for the first time. From my (inadequate) testing, it seems > that performance of average Ada code is on par with average > C code, and there's a clear advantage in runtime safety. The > GNU ada compiler makes pretty sure that there are very few > platforms without easy access to Ada, so portability should be > on at least an equal footing too. > > My question is: how come Ada isn't more popular? 1. Ada-83 simply sucked. Expensive, inexpressive, with poor libraries and no support for writing desktop applications. Ada-83 was designed for embedded development, and was OK for that purpose, but it was hopeless for writing hosted applications. 2. For the same reason that Esperanto isn't more popular. Ada was designed by a committee to meet theroetical needs. Most popular languages have evolved to meet practical needs. They grew from humble beginnings to widespread acceptance. Theoretically, they may be abominations, but they get the job done. 3. For the same reason that Limburger cheese isn't more popular. Most programmers who have tried Ada didn't like it. What makes a programmer like a new language? Usually, someone comes along and says something like "Remember that program that we spent two weeks writing in C? Here's a Perl implementation that I put together in three hours and one-tenth the code." That's never happened with Ada. > > This isn't intended to start a flame war, I'm genuinely interested. > > thanks, > MC