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=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 11 Dec 92 12:45:48 GMT From: 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) Subject: Re: Open Systems closed to Ada? Message-ID: <1992Dec11.124548.23115@mksol.dseg.ti.com> List-Id: 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.