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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Subject: Re: The future of Ada is at risk
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Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:14:50 +0100
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Date: 2007-12-29T12:14:51+01:00
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On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:06:39 +0100, Rico Secada wrote:

> I have been doing a lot of research about the usage of Ada, both in
> industry and in the Open Source community. I am possible writing a paper
> on the issue and needs some constructive criticism. 
> 
> I have reached the following conclusions:
> 
> 1. Many companies are moving away from Ada towards C/C++. Many has
> already moved during the past 10 years.

I think that the wave already passed. Everybody who didn't want Ada has get
rid of it long ago. Ada has nothing to loose here.

> 2. Very few projects exists on Sourceforge and Freshmeat compared to
> other languages like C++, Java, Python and others.

True. There is little interest in Ada among the open source movement. I
think there are reasons for that. Much depends on how a programming
language recruits followers and how people come into open source. But this
might be more an issue of the open source model than of the language.

> 3. This is the biggest problem: Ada lacks free support on all
> platforms.

Hmm, Ada definitely lacks support on the platforms where it were obviously
superior to any other languages (massively parallel, embedded, real-time,
gaming, distributed computing). But that is not *all*, though maybe they
will become "key" platforms in some near future.

> Problems with GNU GNAT and platform independence seems to be the one
> major reason why Ada isn't a moving target.

It is just unfair to address this to AdaCore. There are of course numerous
problems with AdaCore's policy, but the fact is, - we have an open source
industrial-strength Ada compiler thank to AdaCore efforts. Ada community is
to weak to maintain an Ada compiler. Otherwise, that would have happened
long time ago.

Happy New Year!

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de