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,df1a7f1c3c3bc77e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Maciej Sobczak Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: An Ada Advice Inquiry Date: 6 May 2007 12:38:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1178480316.415370.194260@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> References: <1178448459.256329.28590@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 85.3.102.41 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1178480316 11559 127.0.0.1 (6 May 2007 19:38:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 19:38:36 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=85.3.102.41; posting-account=Ch8E9Q0AAAA7lJxCsphg7hBNIsMsP4AE Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:15601 Date: 2007-05-06T12:38:36-07:00 List-Id: On 6 Maj, 17:47, wrote: > My original inquiry was about whether any new projects are being > started in Ada. That's right - I therefore apologise for the harsh tone of my previous post. > I think the C++ people would be unlikely to have > an answer to that question. They might, however, tell you how their experiences changed over the last decade. The truth is that C++ earned its bad reputation some years ago and today using these old slogans over and over is as useful as saying that Ada is useful only for US defense industry. > What I have learned, from contributions to me inbox and comments > in this forum, is that a great many new projects are being started in > Ada. Which is a good news. Still, what is missing is publicity. You say that nobody is aware of Ada (and so nobody wants to start new Ada projects) and at the same time that there are many secret projects started in it. It doesn't make much sense. > As usual, quite a few of my correspondents have asked not > to be quoted/cited. And that's why these guys will write their next project in Java. Or Groovy. > I have also had some "buyer's remorse" messages. That is, more than > a few of those email messages have said how disappointed they are > with the decision to use C++ instead of Ada. The C++ decision has > not been as sucessful as they had hoped, and there is some wishful > thinking that they would have been better to have stayed with Ada. "Stayed" - so these are Ada guys who switched to C++? Why? If they already had Ada experience and the necessary inertia in the organization, why they have switched? They should not. It doesn't make much sense to bash C++ if these people are not successful after the forced switch. This will happen in any direction. Take some experienced C++ team, force them to switch to Ada and you will hear the same complaints. I'm a C++ programmer and I've tried to write some things in Ada - now I can complain about Ada as long as you are willing to listen. The past experience of the team is probably more important than anything else when choosing the technology for the next project. I think that you are not getting any balanced feedback. > Now that the code is written in C++, they have to live with the agony > of C++ while longing for the ecstasy of Ada. I can imagine the contrary. It's a matter of where you come from. > As to the suggestion that I make this inquiry of the C++ forums, > my experience is that the vast number of C++ users are woefully > ignorant about Ada. This is, unfortunately, very true. And from my own perspective I can tell that C++ programmers can benefit from learning Ada. But note that learning != switching. Sorry: learning /= switching. ;-) > On the other hand, C++ is so obnoxiously ubiquitous > that a person who uses Ada cannot avoid C, C++, or Java. Are you sure that people who "cannot avoid" something have the same experiences as those who are "dedicated users" of something? I think that the difference is fundamental and significantly influences the feedback that you can get from them. > Ada is not perfect for every project. > There are other languages that have great virtue for different kinds > of projects. However, as nearly as I can tell, at this point in the > world of programming, C++ has outlived its usefulness for most > of the tasks for which it was once used. I'm afraid it's not yet dead and the recent (well, upcoming) standard moves it forward much more than Ada did in its last standard iteration. This means that the choice between C++ and Ada might be even more difficult for you in the future. > It has become the close > equivalent of an object-oriented Assembler, forcing a lot of > programmers to focus on low-level concerns that ought to be > a marginal aspect of modern software engineering. I think that this is exactly where you miss that last couple of years. I really don't remember when was the last time I cared about low-level concerns in C++. Unless I had to (that is, it was actually the goal), but then nothing was obstructing my goals neither. Our experiences are apparently different. -- Maciej Sobczak http://www.msobczak.com/