From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,86616b1931cbdae5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: safetran Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ? Date: 1997/07/21 Message-ID: <33D416AA.4622C3C8@kaiwan.com> X-Deja-AN: 258062549 References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Organization: Safetran Systems Corporation Reply-To: safetran@kaiwan.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-07-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: My ISP does not seem to be getting all the messages from the news server at sw-eng.falls-church so I can't reply to each of your messages individually - I can only post my reply to my news server. I've got a complaint in with the ISP and hope he will fix it soon. Sorry about that. Also as a result of that this email is pretty long. >Stanley Allen writes: >Worries #1 and #3 would also be facing you if you choose C++ or Java. I would not be worried about C++ that much. Considering the volume of C++ code produced and the number of programmers of C++ its going to be around for quite a while. C came out in the early seventies and its still around. Java - I agree. Its new and one does not know how long it will be around for. I also do not know how well Java will turn out in the hard real time world. I know that a lot of work is going on in trying to make it deterministic and there are a couple of vendors who have succeeded (somewhat). >Worry #2 is intersting ... are you accepting resumes? I think a >lot of Ada program Yes we are hiring - have about 4 slots open. Though you may not find the work very interesting :). One important bit of info I left out was that we do **safety critical** systems. As a lot of you know this can be a rigorous environment to work in. Robert Dewar writes: >I am a little puzzled by (2), hard to find = high market value. But perhaps >what you should be looking for anyway is *good* programmers. What I meant was that (sometimes) people do not want to program in Ada. The languages in vogue today are C/C++/Java. And everyone wants these to be on their resume. So sometimes programmers/engineers do not want to work in Ada as it has "lower market value" -- whatever that means !! >As to (3), whether your code is maintainable or not depends on whether it >is maintainable code. I was not very clear here : yes Ada is very maintainable but if (in 10 years) you can't find programmers who know the language then it does not really matter how maintainable the language is. Like a lot of you have said a good programmer can pick up any language - I agree with that. Its just that if you hire someone and he has to learn a new language - well that is additional cost vs hiring someone who already knows it. >If you are trying to look ahead ten >years to see what will be the popular language-du-jour in the year 2007, >I think that is an idle excercise. I doubt it will be any of Java, C++ >or Ada, but that really does not matter. Don't know about that. C has survived a long time. If someone was to ask me to bet the odds of Ada vs C++ I would go for C++. Again I am not saying that C++ is better; like I mentioned in my original post I have used Ada for over 7 years and also use C/C++. Paul Van Bellinghan writes: >I think the man is sold on Ada and does not have a problem training "good" >programmers in using Ada for the company's RT embedded apps. Correct. >Many of the candidates we >interview are concerned about the future of the Ada language. Even the DOD >may be moving away from it (there are advocates for both C++ and Ada in the >DOD). Amen. >What matters, I told them, is having >experience in applying good programming techniques to RTE designs. Of >course, it fell on deaf ears. You are right about this. I also find that those people who have worked with Ada generally make better programmers - their code is more readable. I have a few colleagues who used to work with Ada but now work with C/C++ and their code is infinitely more readable that just straight C programmers. This is not to say that there aren't good C/C++ programmers out there. Brian Rogoff writes: >How many languages *haven't* survived? Cobol, Fortran, C, PL/1, and REXX >are still thriving. There is even a company selling Algol 68 compilers. My question was not survival as just survival - but more will Ada become a bit more mainstream or at least stay as "mainstream" as it is today. I agree with you that all these languages have survived but how mainstream are they compared to (say) C/C++. >Unless you are writing code for one of those embedded microprocessors with >no Ada compiler, why do you want to switch? I assume you are using Ada 95, >right? I think I have explained why I am thinking of switching. We were using Ada 83. But on the new projects we would try to use Ada 95. >I believe so, but there is a good free (as in free source) compiler, so >you'll never be "orphaned". We work in the embedded world and the "Free" compiler is a host compiler. While GNAT can be ported to be cross we also use emulators and need a debugger to work with this etc etc.. So GNAT by itself is only part of the answer. Jeff Carter writes: >Ada is the language of choice for very large systems and for >safety-critical systems. Yes you are correct. However a lot of safety critical systems are being done in C/C++. A lot of medical electronics company's, the car industry, rail-road industry etc etc do their safety critical systems in C - I know these to be correct as I have spoken with people from these industries and work in one of them myself. Also, even when Ada was mandated, I understand that DOD contractors would get waivers and do their systems in C. Don't know to what extent this is true but I have friends who work in DOD related companies and this is what I heard from them. So atleast some military and aerospace related software is in C. There is a book on writing safety critical software in C and in the book the author acknowledges interviews he has done with DOD/aerospace firms and they were using C. Please do not mis-understand - I am not endorsing any of the above or saying it is good practice. Just that this is how things are. -- Rakesh Rakesh.Malhotra@Safetran.com