Re: Ada last place in programming language census

[cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.]

>  
>     Here are the results for the August 1992 survey:
>  
>                          Cobol          405,325
>                          Basic          332,786
>                          Assembler      309,163
>                          Fortran        266,912
>                          RPG II         163,443
>                          Pascal         162,391
>                          C              160,295
>                          SQL            154,814
>                          SAS            147,365
>                          PL/1           114,340
>                          C++             71,448
>                          RPG II          69,529
>                          APL             18,185
>                          Ada             10,459
>  
>     What can we conclude?

 Most of all, we can conclude that old habits are hard to break.  The top
 four langauges have all been around since I was probably a kid.  The people
 who have been taught those langauges will want to continue to use them
 because they are proficient in them.  Ada, C, and C++  haven't been as long
 ( well maybe C - circa 1972) and the software culture hasn't accepted them as
 readily yet.

  Ada, C and C++ are all good languages.  In some cases, C might be better
  than Ada,  in other other cases,  I would certainly prefer Ada.  We have
  a 100k+ flight management system that could be done in C, but would
  probably take us more time to integrate and debug.  The interfaces in a
  large system is what has always given us the most problems, and Ada
  pounded those out in a hurry, so it has helped us a great deal there.

  Ada isn't the langauge for every program since each program has different
  needs.  I have found it to be quite good for most embedded applications,
  although I would like something other than unchecked_conversion for
  twiddling the bits (C is good for that!).

  I think this is why think you couldn't  reasonably get 100%
  compliance from the mandate.  Eveything in Ada is like saying everyone in
  the Gov't has to drive a Ford - even if a Ford isn't the best vehicle for
  the job.   I am developing a Software Design Document generator for our
  program and I am doing it in Turbo Pascal.  Why? Because I don't have an Ada
  compiler for my PC at home (or at work), and the TP compilers have long
  been cheap and reliable, plus I already have code that I can reuse to
  generate this document.  So, in this case - Turbo Pascal was the best
  choice for me.  I have Turbo C, but my library of routines is not as
  developed as my Pascal library, and I am not as proficient in C as Pascal.
  I also have a deadline - which makes it harder for me to want to fight
  with the C compiler - which is much slower on my machine, than the TP
  compiler.  All these things made it cost effective to do it in TP - which
  was close at hand and portable (but not Ada).

  Enough ranting - hopefully our Gov't can see that even though Ada is a
  good langauge,  mandating it in every application is not a good idea.
  It is a good idea to encourage reuse through the use of a single
  language, and to standardize software development, but to force every
  program to use only Ada (we have assembly in our Ada runtime) is to be
  ignorant of all other software technology.

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Todd A Sorensen               Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems Division
505-828-5611                  internet: tsorense@dasd.honeywell.com
                              internet: tas@dasd.honeywell.com
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