Re: Why Ada is not the Commercial Lang of Choice

["Yasmiin S. Davis" <yasmiin@gte.net>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> John Volan said
> 
> <<Ada *is* inadequate; but so is C. I'd certainly prefer to use Ada
> than C
> or
> (shudder) COBOL, both of which I've been forced to use. Most of the
> inadequacies in Ada apply in spades to C.

> Interesting, why the shudder at COBOL. I have written a lot of COBOL,
> and
> find it quite amenable. For IS Systems, I would use the ranking:

> Ada/95
> COBOL
> Ada/83
> C
> 
> There are some respects in which i prefer COBOL to Ada. I find the
> approach
> to dynamic (runtime) binding of modules in COBOL to be lighter and
> easier
> than in Ada Annex E (I am talking about dynamic call). I also like the
> easy local refinement syntax in COBOL.


Well at risk of starting a war -- while I like Ada and am not a C fan (
I am an ALGOL junkie in need of a fix), what the commercial would needs
to to business type programming ( i.e. the capture of domain knowledge /
business logic) is a new language  or at least not C++.  As a systems
architect I am seeing commercial institutions addopt C++ for this
purpose.  Having to reverse engineer an object model from C++ code for
and on going 3 tier client server systems for claims processing -- all I
can say is the first attempt to do mainyenance on that system will
result in the poor client company having to junk it.

Now yes we do have Object COBOL from Micro Focus -- I don't know how
much that is being used.

But my lament is the industry has been here before and learned its
lesson.  Remember those days before the wide availability of COBOL on
Minis when business apps were writen in Fortran ?  Well I have to say
giving the poor business programmer C or Ada or C++ is just as bad -- 
and its poor me who has to audit and read that code -- help.

Yasmiin