Re: Ada noob here! Is Ada widely used?

[Bryan <brobinson.eng@gmail.com>]

On May 21, 7:05 pm, Duke Normandin <dukeofp...@ml1.net> wrote:
> On 2010-05-21, Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
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>
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> > Ludovic Brenta expounded innews:87d3wqbayp.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org:
>
> >> Duke Normandin writes:
> >>> On 2010-05-20, Anonymous <cri...@ecn.org> wrote:
> >>>>> Just curious to know if Ada is still widely used, and in what
> >>>>> area(s) does it excel, e.g. data processing, number crunching,
> >>>>> graphics, etc? TIA..
>
> > It's ok to be curious but this begs the question of why
> > it is important for it to be "popular"?
>
> > Do you have to sell it's use at your company?
>
> > Are you considering the availability of tools and/or
> > source code?
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> > Or, are you interested in it for your own (or open sourced)
> > projects?
>
> > Depending on the answers to some of these factors,
> > popularity may not be important.
>
> Nothing too terribly mind-boggling! ;) Just don't want to spend the time
> learning a "soon-to-be" fossil of a language, with no where to go but in a
> museum. Been there; done that! I'm also looking at learning Miranda - but
> guess what? Nice, simple functional language - but zero community and
> support. It _may_ get a second life - maybe. Meanwhile, I'm liking Ada.
> --

By all means I say learn Ada at least as a learning exercise.  It's a
great language that you can grow with over time.  GNAT is a great tool
set as well, it provides you everything you need in the beginning.
And let us not forget that some very interesting projects are built
with Ada commercially!

My only word of caution is to make sure you have a "popular" industry
language on your tool belt as well.  Try as I have, I've never been
able to find work with Ada.  When I was in Asia-Pacific, Ada was
unheard of.  In North America I find Ada is more well known, but
without ten years of Ada industry experience, most employers are
simply not interested in talking to candidates. Despite all of its
faults, C++ has kept me employed and working on interesting
projects. :)   Multiple interpretations on C++ can be derived from
that last statement.