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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham 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!j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? Date: 24 Jan 2007 03:06:25 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1169636785.504223.139630@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com> References: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.122.158.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1169636801 24957 127.0.0.1 (24 Jan 2007 11:06:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:06:41 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com; posting-host=206.122.158.4; posting-account=CZAoAgwAAAD9ntJQ85OlWL0_Q5EFdzP_ Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8474 Date: 2007-01-24T03:06:25-08:00 List-Id: Jeffrey R. Carter: > > Turbo Pascal and other alternatives were already in place and > > much cheaper than Ada. A few brave souls tried to compete > > with products such as RR Software's Janus Ada and Meridian's > > AdaVantage, but the full environment (e.g., integrated editors, > > debuggers, etc.) were not in place they were for Turbo Pascal. > There's always the question of why, given TP's widespread popularity, C > became more popular. It has to do with the deep unportability of Pascal and (consequence) the fragmentation of Pascal into incompatible dialects. At the time you had Amiga's, Atari's, Mac's; you had MS Windows coming to replace DOS, so a DOS-oriented, Pascal dialect had little chance against C, except for a short time. TP was an extremely fast compiler producing unoptimized code (except some trivial XOR AX,AX's), but with the CPU's frequencies quickly up around 1990, the interest was more targeted to profit from this speed in the compiled code and less to have a couple millions more of LoC compiled per second. ... > Windows 95 was the 1st widely used OS with support for tasking. Ada (95) > was the only widely available language with support for tasking at the > time. We probably lost a good opportunity to gain more acceptance of Ada > by not including a standard windowing library and promoting Ada as the > best language for taking advantage of Win95's features. Mmmh I think it was a good idea *not* to include a standard windowing library: then now Ada would be stuck with an outdated standard windowing library. There was also another problem then: the lack of a good but cheap or free compiler. Don't be so pessimistic, Ada's quality only appear with time - and of course with the effort of brave souls. If you say "I'm a smart software engineer, Ada is for me and not for you", you won't help Ada. If you make good, visible, useful open-source software with Ada, you will help. ______________________________________________________________ Gautier -- http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/index.htm Ada programming -- http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/gsoft.htm NB: For a direct answer, e-mail address on the Web site!