Re: Why is Ada succeeding in Europe?

[pipex!uknet!warwick!zaphod.crihan.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!scsing.switch.ch!sicsu n!disuns2.epfl.ch!lglsun!nebbe@uunet.uu.net (Robb Nebbe)]

In article <25231@alice.att.com>, bs@alice.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup) writes:
: 
: 
: Over the years I have noticed that a new programming language
: is invariably more popular on the other side of the Atlantic;
: independently of which side you happen to be on at the time.
: 
: I wonder if the Pacific has the same effect on language popularity?

Hmm... I'm in Europe and it seems to me that Ada is doing a lot better
over here than it is in the U.S. I have also encountered a lot more
hostility towards C in Europe than I ever did in the U.S.

I would guess that the difference between Europe and the U.S. is that
C was firmly entrenched in the universities in the U.S. while the
universities in Europe used a much wider mix of languages and were thus
more open to accepting a new language.

If the choice is between Pascal and Ada the choice is obvious if you
want to do a big project. If the choice is between C/C++ and Ada
the choice is a lot harder to make. A really big plus for C/C++ is 
that it integrates so well with UNIX. So well in fact that a large
percentage of C programmers don't know what is actually C and what is
UNIX.

Robb