From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_40,TO_NO_BRKTS_PCNT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 21 Oct 91 17:58:25 GMT From: pattis@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) Subject: Sociology of Programming Language Use Message-ID: <1991Oct21.175825.10745@beaver.cs.washington.edu> List-Id: I thought that the following post (From: eric@tfs.com (Eric Smith)) might be of interest to those discussing why Ada hasn't "caught on" as much as it "should". --------------------------------------------------------------------- C++ seems to be gaining "critical mass" for the same reason Pascal did in the late 1970's. Pascal became widely available at low cost when UCSD published their version at a very low price. It rapidly gained popularity during the rest of the 1970's and early 1980's. Borland's Turbo Pascal gave it an additional kick. The same thing happened to C a few years after Pascal. There were lots of companies publishing low cost high quality compilers for it so it gained critical mass. The same thing has been happening with C++ recently, and that is IMHO the real reason why C++ is more popular than Eiffel. When people choose a new programming language, it has nothing to do with what language they used before. Programmers satisfied with their present programming language are less likely to try to find better alternatives than those who are dissatisfied. So a C programmer who wants to find a better language would probably have a bias against C++ in favor of getting further away from C. However, all such biases probably have much less effect than they get credit for. The real motivating forces might be almost purely economic. Programmers want to use whatever language lets them get the most work done with the least effort, provided they don't have to pay a lot of money to get started with it. Suppose I could use Eiffel at work but just C++ at home. If I spend 20% of my time programming at home on personal projects, doesn't it make sense that I would want to use the same language at work, just to avoid daily switching between them? Especially if that is the only way I could use the same class libraries etc.? A 486/33 with 64 megabytes of ram costs around $5000. A good C++ compiler for it usually adds less than a few hundred dollars to that. I have been programming for more than 20 years, but have never had access to any computer more powerful than that. Not even the mainframes I used to program were anywhere near that powerful. Compare that to what is available with Eiffel. I don't know of any system of such low cost that will even run Eiffel. And I suspect the Eiffel compiler alone would probably cost a large fraction of that. It would be wonderful to have Eiffel as readily available as C++, but until then, it's more like a fairy tale than a real product. Meanwhile C++, even though less elegant than Eiffel, is genuine magic. In a race between genuine magic and a fairy tale, the genuine magic usually wins. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard E. Pattis "Programming languages are like Department of Computer Science pizzas - they come in only "too" and Engineering sizes: too big and too small."