Re: Gauntlet gathering rust and dust

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!sdd.hp.com!col.hp.com!csn!news.den.mmc.c om!iplmail!jcrigler@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Crigler)]

Bob Hathaway (rjh@geodesic.com) wrote in response to some semi-sarcastic
comments of mine:

: If your favorite language (just what is that anyway, Jim)

Actually, I don't _have_ a favorite; I'm like a language wino:  I
program in whateversaround.  At work, I'm constrained to FORTRAN and C;
at home, C, Forth, BASIC; at grad. school, I've been working with Ada
for some time.  (In fairness to my employer, I have, in previous
assignments worked extensively with Ada {several KLOC}, less with PL/M
and HP's Rocky Mountain Spotted BASIC.)

: If your favorite language [...] lacks of the aforementioned
: capabilities, why pick on Ada?

I didn't intend to pick on Ada (which I like!); my intention was to
pick on Ada _vendors_ for their ignoring the commercial industry.

: And on keeping Ada secret, Ada's use is mandated by the government
: and military because of its emphasis on reliable, large-scale
: software development, a lot of which is classified.  That's why many
: of the published statistics on programming language usage seem
: cockeyed to me, they obviously have a low content validity, meaning
: they aren't necessarily representative of what's actually being
: used.
 
Agreed that published stats seem cockeyed (listening, Greg?  Keep
listening...), but what % is classified?  (That statistic is probably
classified, too :-) But I have a feeling that it's probably < 25%.
Anybody got real numbers?

Jim Crigler
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Opinions only.