Re: The Battle of the Cultures

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!caen!saimiri.pri]

In article <1993Jun1.124047.16410@sei.cmu.edu> wellerd@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (David 
Weller) writes:
>
>One interesting phenomenon I have witnessed in the last 4 years is that,
>as a programming culture, we tend to tinker at home also.  My experience
>has been that developers chose more "accessible" languages, like
>Borland C++, for development at home (never mind that Meridian is
>competetively priced against BC++, it still isn't as accessible).
>This experience at home impacts our choices at work.  Our culture,
>primarily composed of programmers (and I mean a different context
>from "software engineers".  Probably not the word "hacker", more
>like "casual programmer"), is driven more by what empowers THEMSELVES,
>rather than what empowers a project (perhaps it would be different
>if we were required to stick to a software project for it's life? :-).
>Thus, project choices are generally driven by a technical "leader"
>serving their own agenda (it is quite possible that that person's
>"agenda" is good software engineering, thus leading them toward Ada).

I have both Meridian Ada and Think Pascal on my Mac at home.  They were
(order of magnitude) the same price.

So far I just "hack" (er, that's casually program; yeah, I like that).

But, if I were to attempt to develop a software product, I would much
prefer Ada as a programming language, but would choose Pascal.
Why?  Because of the Think Class Library which gives me a huge headstart
on programming the Mac's interface and access to system calls.
(Meridian has an Ada binding to the Mac toolbox and System 7, but its
not the same as what the Think Class Library provides.)
I suspect a similar situation exists for MS Windows on the PC.

If a near-equivalent library were included with the Ada compiler,
I wouldn't ever have considered the Think Pascal/C family.
For my personal use, it isn't "culture" but tool availability and
maturity which determines my choice of language.

Whether this has anything to do with Mandates or not, I couldn't say. :-)

>-Comments above aren't neceessarily the opinion of the SEI, AJPO, or CAE-Link-
>David Weller  |  Have you hugged your DRAGOON lately?
>----I'm the Ultimate International Masochist: I speak Ada AND Esperanto!-----

In that case, I'm one of the Ultimate Computer Masochists:
I speak Ada on a Mac.

-- 
Terry J. Westley, Principal Computer Scientist
Calspan Corporation, P.O. Box 400, Buffalo, NY 14225
westley@calspan.com
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