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Date: 12 Nov 92 18:00:59 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rphroy!caen!uwm.edu!ogicse!u
senet.coe.montana.edu!giac1.oscs.montana.edu!uesu03@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Lou G
lassy)
Subject: Re: Who uses Ada??
Message-ID: <1992Nov12.180059.9574@coe.montana.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Various people write various things about using or choosing Ada,
to which michaeln replied:

!Hmm... yes, I'd be interested to see who uses Ada by choice. I've
!been trying to use it for months now and really trying to keep an
!open mind about it, but I really, honestly haven't been able to
!see any merit in the language whatsoever. 
   [stuff deleted]

I am using Ada to write a subset Fortran-90 compiler.  Why Ada?

For me, there are a couple of factors:  economics and performance.

Economics.  I'm writing a compiler.  I'd like it to be correct, and I'd
like to spend as little time (money) as I can to make it.  It's true
that correct code can be written in any language, but where I have
found Ada shines, is the amount of 'built-in' correctness Ada requires
just to get the program to COMPILE.  The other distant option [for
choice implementation language] is one of the Modula family.  Although
I'm only just beginning to learn about Ada's ability to re-use generic
procedures, I can see already that this will help me crank out a decent
product faster.  (I have done only a few KSLOC of Modula-2, and
generics in Modula strike me as being of the "cross-your-fingers"
variety.  :-)

[ no, gcc -Wall -ansi -pedantic  + lint doesn't give you the 
  same level of rigor as Ada, in my limited experience. ]

Performance.  In the best of all possible worlds, I'd be using a pure
functional language [eg Hope, Haskell]... Unfortunately, I don't know
the functional idiom well enough to use it for major projects, and
compilers for functional languages are relatively rare [an interpreted
F90 compiler would be a bit slow, I'd think].  Someday, I'd like to
learn either Haskell, Hope, or ML, and be able to use these languages
(and the functional programming paradigm) to produce compilers... but
I'm not there yet.

I'm only a student; my experience pales by comparison with most others
who read and post to this group.  Still, I'd like to think my rationale
for choosing Ada is as sound as it is simple:  "Life is too short for
programming reliable applications in C." :-)

[for what it's worth, I'd written small programs (<5KSLOC each) in
 Common Lisp, Scheme, Modula-2, Fortran77, C, J, and Pascal.  Ergo,
 my choice of Ada for the project at hand is based on some (small)
 knowledge of the alternatives.]

Lou.

-- 
Lou Glassy (uesu03@giac1.oscs.montana.edu)   Watch the field behind the plow
Earth Sciences Department                    Turn to straight, dark rows
Montana State University                     Put another season's promise
Bozeman, Montana 59715 USA                   In the ground...  --Stan Rogers