Re: Open Systems closed to Ada?

[agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mkso l!mccall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <1992Dec7.232157.3816@ennews.eas.asu.edu> koehnema@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Harry
 Koehnemann) writes:

>In article <1992Dec7.215753.18846@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com 
(fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>
>>No, I'm not equating popular with good.  The assertion was made that
>>the only thing C has going for it is a large trained base of
>>programmers and that schools teach it.  Well, extrapolating back into
>>the past, that can't have always been the case, so C must have, or at
>>least had in the past, SOMETHING else going for it.

>It does - free compilers.  Universities are poor.  C compilers are free
>on Unix platforms.  In contrast, Ada compilers are absurdly expensive.
>Since our US industry is so reluctant to spend money on anything that
>might take more than 3 months to start showing a return on their
>investment (like training), they'll use the language dictated to them
>by the current masses.

While this is certainly one factor that may have contributed to the
popularity of C, I don't see it as a full explanation.  After all, it
was also used rather heavily in some areas of industry before that
pupularity was ever achieved.  Why would people LIKE such a language
and prefer to work in it?  We did this a while back; most of us don't
appear to have been locked into the languages we learned first, so
this can't be a full explanation.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.