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From: Ingemar Ragnemalm <ingemar@lysator.liu.se>
Subject: Re: Ada -- a popular language?
Date: 1997/04/12
Message-ID: <334F5A5A.72FE@lysator.liu.se>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 234271675
References: <01bc45df$10fa6480$d27d8ea1@AaBbCcDd>
Organization: Lysator computer club
Reply-To: ingemar@lysator.liu.se
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Centaury wrote:
> 
> If Ada is so powerful and versatile, why isn't everybody opting to use it,
> instead of the much complicated (but much preferred) C language?

Any time someone makes a great product that promises to make work
different and
easier, it threatens the oldtimers, who will backtalk it to no end. If
something
is complicated to use, easy to mess up, it means more power to the
experts.
The opposite means that the experts are losing ground.

I am no Ada expert, but as far as I know Ada (VERY little) it is a
modern, very
readable language, related to Pascal but more standardized. Readable
code means
that anyone can pick up your code and modify it. So, C programmers are
backtalking
both Ada and Pascal, since it threatens them, makes them easier to
replace.

I know C well, and think it is a horrible language. Someone called it a
"glorified
macro assembler", which is quite true. Just look at its "for" statements
and its
case switches. The for is just a kind of macro, and the case switch is a
jump
table.