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=-0.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5f8432149982f35e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fca1b,5f8432149982f35e X-Google-Attributes: gidfca1b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-10-15 22:27:29 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!supernews.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!news1.mntp1.il.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com> From: Igor Kovalenko X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.os.qnx Subject: Re: Ada and QNX References: <8r1i82$ri3$1@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl> <8r5pe5$h70$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8FCDFD7EEnopenopena@63.209.170.206> <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 05:27:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.8.123.131 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.mntp1.il.home.com 971674047 24.8.123.131 (Sun, 15 Oct 2000 22:27:27 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 22:27:27 PDT Organization: @Home Network Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:1274 comp.os.qnx:2881 Date: 2000-10-16T05:27:27+00:00 List-Id: Lao Xiao Hai wrote: > > Some of the alternatives to Ada are more popular. Some misguided > managers have mistaken popularity for quality and several DoD > contractors have made the error of forsaking Ada in favor of inferior > technologies such as C++. Does this mean Ada is dead in those > organizations? Not really. > > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > reconsider the benefits of Ada. C++, for example, turns out to be just > another pretty face. Even as early as the wedding night, scrubbed of its > makeup, shed of its adornments, the C++ honeymoon can quite suddenly > be over. Sadly, we continue to see some make decisions for form over > substance. > To contuinue the analogy, it sounds pretty much like a rant of a left woman about how foolish her guy was to marry another woman, because her breasts are fake and most of her face is a surgeons's talent. Those rants never bring the guy back, because if he's left then it was for a good reason. He probably did not like her enough with all her real good amenities. > But "Ada is DEAD?" Hardly. It appears that a prodigality of resources > dedicated to opposing technologies was important so those deluded souls > could understand the importance of what they had in the first place. > Now they need to get over buyer's remorse and get back to the solid > capabilities available in Ada. > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient code) and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally. Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming (even C++ is too high). And yet it is not as portable and distributable as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Of course, those are just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I don't say that those opinions are absolute right. In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time until a) and b) is done. - Igor