Re: Why don't large companies use Ada?

[jgray@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Jeff Gray)]

In article <D03AL2.5xw@aston.ac.uk>, Gareth Bromley writes:


>Why should they bother??
>
>Given that most students coming out of college/University will have some
>experience in programming some type of language Pascal, Modula-2/3, C
>and possibly BASIC plus any others and also most colleges/Universities
>provide courses in C, it is totally logical, and more important cost
>saving to send/train employees on C++ courses, and thus program systems
>in C++.

I have not seen a recent survey of language use (in terms of CS-1 and CS-2) in
U.S. universities. The last one that I am aware of, however, placed Ada second 
behind Pascal. Many students are coming out with Ada experience. Why not
utilize that experience?

>Why?
>
>i) Cost. If the user has a basic knowledge of C or other programming language
>then converting to C++ is relatively easy.

Relatively easy? Quickly converting C programmers to C++ may give them an
understanding of the syntactic differences between the two languages but
they will be sorely unprepared for understanding the proper way of applying
the object-oriented paradigm. The result will resemble the AdaTRAN programmers
of the early '80s.

>ii) Ada's complexity. Most new users will quickly come across all Ada's *nice*
>type checking, or special constructs which require a different syntax to normal.
>In other languages these are not required.

Nor are they always available. I have often found the type checking in Ada to
be a blessing rather than a hindrance.

>iii) Support. Virtually every computer system in the world has a C++ compiler,
>and it is being updated continually. Because that is where all the money is.
>Not every computer system in the world has Ada on it, plus most will not be
>powerful enough to run it.                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Aside from a Commodore 64 or Vic-20 (or even Timex Sinclair), could you give
me an example of some present day machines that can not support an Ada
compiler?


>iv) Libraries, Code already written and available experts. C++ has access straight
>away to all the C code libraries written. Not just a few nice ones, but all
>C library code ever written, one reason the famous COBOL is still around!
>Lots and lots of code has already been written in C++, and also any company can
>go out and get any number of C++ programmers, or even C ones and train them,
>whereas there are fewer Ada programmers.

Lots and Lots of code is also available from some of the repositories like
CARDS, ASSET, AdaNet (is it still called this anymore) and other suppliers.