From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,518abe6ba1515a51 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-08 06:12:19 PST Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!bnr.co.uk!uknet!pcl!priestm From: priestm@westminster.ac.uk (Mark Priestley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Mike Feldman, meet Archie Message-ID: <1993Mar8.132419.21952@westminster.ac.uk> Date: 8 Mar 93 13:24:19 GMT References: <1993Mar6.033256.18621@seas.gwu.edu> Organization: University of Westminster In-Reply-To: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu's message of Sat, 6 Mar 1993 03:32:56 GMT Date: 1993-03-08T13:24:19+00:00 List-Id: In article <1993Mar6.033256.18621@seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: This is increasingly seen to be a canard. I have met many hundreds of academics in the last few years as an active Ada teacher and SIGAda education co-chair. I hear _over and over_ that the problems with Ada in recent years in breaking into academia are mostly _not_ political- correctness problems, but (in no particular order) - ignorance about Ada's accomplishments and possibilities; - perceived tremendous cost of compilers; - lack of curriculum-oriented textbooks. There is another, more fundamental reason in my opinion: Ada is widely regarded as a dead language, both by students and many faculty members, and as a result, although the technical merits of the language might be well-understood, no-one's prepared to make the significant investment that changing to Ada would represent. By "dead language" I mean an ill-assorted collection of observations, including: "there are very few jobs in Ada"; "why don't Borland have an Ada compiler?"; "why is Ada introducing tagged types, instead ofjoining the OO mainstream?" As a colleague said: "it's like teaching Latin instead of French, on the grounds that Latin's got more grammmar". -- Mark Priestley Email: M.Priestley@uk.ac.westminster School of Computer Science ... University of Westminster 115 New Cavendish Street Telephone: +44 (0)71-911 5000 ext. 3653