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=0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,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!l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: JPWoodruff@gmail.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? Date: 25 Jan 2007 21:01:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1169787675.590911.43840@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1169597572.530180.35780@h3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.4.21.236 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1169787690 3732 127.0.0.1 (26 Jan 2007 05:01:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:01:30 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: 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) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.4.21.236; posting-account=fJYhjA0AAADq5HS0Ommw0DzKlat-I76I Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8583 Date: 2007-01-25T21:01:15-08:00 List-Id: On Jan 24, 5:01 pm, "Alexander E. Kopilovich" wrote: > JPWoodruff wrote: > > classes of smart young > >teenagers > And thread-of-execution debugging > richly furnishes this abstraction with emotionally colored and socially > sharable practical cases. No wonder that it attracts some fraction of smart > young teenagers. I take your point. For all I know that's a good thing. But my remark was a claim that Ada won't capture those guys' attention easily. Ada - the way I've practiced her - has small use for execution tracing. Still, the popularity topic is an open issue. After all these years - thanks Arthur, Richard, et al for laying out the history so clearly. I like to believe the influence of that early politics is waning. Technical and economic arguments can be heard above the echo of those early decisions (right?). Maybe it's time to engage a social dimension in programming experience. Not for the first time, but this time on behalf of the technical benefits of Ada. I suggest that my hypothesis points to a way to engage next-generation programmers. I'd like there to be an opportunity to influence young learners toward the "story telling" aspect of programming. It would be nice to have starter exercises with *narrative*. These would accentuate the program's content nouns above its behavior verbs. Sad to say I have absolutely no idea - nor any aptitude - how to make this happen. So it's just another pipe dream unless an idea lights the way. > It is because Ada language isn't adapted well for vague outlining of > possibilities and opportunities. Its main strengths are in expression of > very real and actual things <...> >>From my experience, Ada does well at outlining, but that's a different topic - maybe take it up later. John