Re: Why ADA is not prevalent yet

Re: Why ADA is not prevalent yet

[csus.edu!beach.csulb.edu!nic.csu.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zapho]

>I am currently working as a software specialist for the government.  I am
>a freshly graduate has been working for two years.  While in school, I was
>taught that Fortran will become obsolete and Pascal and ADA will replace
>this "ancient dinosau". However, to my dismay, this dinosau is still alive
>and walking.  What is wrong with the most "sophisticated nation" in the
>world that still using the ancient language of Fortran?
 If you really want to know why people still use Fortran, you might try
asking in comp.lang.fortran. The people who use it are more likely to
know why they use it than the people in comp.lang.ada who don't use it.
 Actually, I expect Pascal to disappear before Fortran. In the small systems
where Pascal might find a useful niche, it's losing the battle to C and for
large projects it can't beat ADA. Soon decent ADA tools will become available
for smaller systems and even die-hard C-haters will have an alternative to
Pascal.
 Back to Fortran. While no sane person would argue that it's 'better' than ADA,
Fortran has some advantages.
 The compiler is often effectively free, since old systems already have one and
new systems require one for maintenance of existing code. Many systems evolve
rather slowly so that ADA's saving in software maintenance does not justify
rewriting the entire system. Despite popular belief, many government labs are
not rolling in money. The purchase of new compilers is a sigificant investment.
 Although there are a lot of bad Fortran programmers, as has been mentioned,
there are also a lot of good, experienced people who are quite fluent in
Fortran. They get the job done quite nicely in Fortran. If I need to write a
short program in 45 seconds I can do it. It takes me longer if I have to
declare all my variables, struggle with I/O operations, worry about what
libraries to include, and think about the scope of my variables. Fortran is
crude. For a large number of tasks, it lacks the expressive power necessary.
But it works. 
 I'd like to hear more from the original poster. What sort of projects has he
been exposed to where Fortran is being used? What reasons has he been given for
the use of Fortran? Is the ADA mandate being violated? Are programmers using
the language in which they are most fluent to express themselves when doing
small jobs, much as one person might prepare a memo using Microsoft Word while
another prefers WordPerfect? Or are large projects being done in an archaic
language because of intransigence of a few old fogies?
 On a personal note. One of my duties is the maintenance of some old Fortran
code on a PDP-11 which controls some specialized hardware. This system is still
used because it is effective for its purpose and the maintenance costs of the
hardware and software have not yet exceeded the price for which equivalent
hardware could be purchased for a more modern platform. I was recently asked
about the possibility of hiring an entry level person to handle these duties to
free me up for more interesting and more important things. My response was that
any young person dumb enough to want to work on that equipment was not the sort
of person we wanted to hire. So, if you are a recent graduate and somebody is
trying to train you in Fortran, get out!  Leave the Fortran stuff to those of
us who already know the language. My guess is that there are plenty of places
where real software engineers can find productive employment. Am I wrong?
-- 
 Speaking only for myself!