Re: Ada rotting? (was: What ada 83 compiler is *best*)

[Marin David Condic <condicma@pwfl.com>]

Rick Thorne wrote:
> 
> My question too, sir.
> 
> Like the rest of you, I have a mortgage to pay and children to feed.  I
> also want to retire in the next 10-15 years (I'm 40).  I really want to be
> where the action is, and I'm simply unconvinced that Ada's doing anything
> but going away.  Can ANYONE offer me anything to the contrary?  I'm
> sincerely interested in hearing otherwise.  I'm an experienced Ada man who
> has moved on to the lush, green (if ugly) C++ Pastures and I'm grazing
> blissfully in the Javalands as well.  I don't see the demand for these
> languages doing anything but increasing, and I see nothing but the
> opposite for Ada. Can ANYONE offer me evidence to the contrary?
> 
To a large extent, the destiny of Ada is what we make of it. We can
stand around complaining that big companies with project managers who
know very little about languages make choices for lower quality
languages instead of Ada. *OR* We can just go off and start building
things in Ada and making them available until it starts to generate its
critical mass needed for a long and prosperous life.

Compiler vendors have done a good job of making Ada available to the
backyard software mechanic either free or for nominal costs. Anyone who
wants to program in Ada can do so and I think these guys deserve a round
of applause for that effort. (I'd still like to see compilers targeted
to even more embedded processors - but that's my particular niche.)

There are certainly a number of people who have produced and made
available useful tools, utilities, reusable components and other
applications in Ada which are available for the cost of a download. If
more of us produced software and put it out there, we'd be adding to
that critical mass. Ask yourself what kinds of things you'd like to have
available when programming in Ada and start building it & making it
available.

And when we *do* get to make the language selection for a project, do we
pick Ada or do we knuckle in to the C++/Java/Whatever pressure around
us?

So where you have a choice to do so, why not take your favorite set of
reusable components or hacker utilities or whatever things are
programmed in Ada and stick them on a web page somewhere? In particular,
make it known/available to universities because if the next generation
of programmers comes out knowing/appreciating Ada, they'll be generating
the demand.

-- 
Marin D. Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
Ph: 561.796.8997         Fx: 561.796.4669

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man."

        --  G.B. Shaw