Re: Ada The Best Language?

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Probably the important factors are not finding more productivity studies or
> arguing the case with one's bosses/peers - although I doubt that hurts. My
> guess is that a more important factor is/will be the availability of good
> tools. Well, good tools decidedly already exist. Lets make that "good tools
> integrated into a development kit".

I'm not certain the "itegration" issue is that big a deal. Granted, it makes
purchasing/acquisition simpler. I think developers on Windows systems think
more along these lines, only because they are used to Microsoft/Borland etc.
bundling their products along these lines.

In the UNIX world however, I don't think this thinking is quite so mainstream.
After all, you want a compiler that fits your cost/reliability/conformance/
validation requirements. You choose your source control tools on the basis
of standards/company mandate/personal preference etc. You choose your editor
often on religious grounds. You choose your debugger on cost/productivity
basis maybe.

In short, you choose the set of tools that work best for you. Many use vi
in the UNIX world, for whatever reasons. Others use GNU emacs, or elvis.
I've personally always used a heavily customized version of MicroEMACS.
But within a group of UNIX developers, you are likely to find just as
many preferences ;-)

Having said all that, I do know that a large portion of these developers
like the IDE approach (if given the choice). I myself do not like them, 
but then, maybe I'm strange that way.

I find that the combination of my own modified editor,
custom tools, command line editing (emacs mode of course) etc., allow
me to be much more effective than any IDE has allowed me to be. Make files
do the rest.

Yet I grant that others do like IDEs, and perhaps perform better that
way.

I personally don't see this "integration matter" as the issue. Management 
doesn't argue against it at this level -- they site the cost of finding 
Ada developers, the fact that it is "unusual" or "not popular". They also 
site that we cannot train people on "Ada" because they themselves may not 
want to be in that area as a career choice. These are the types of issues 
I see and hear.  Rarely is the resistance based upon technical/packaging
details.

Just my $0.02 Cdn.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://members.home.net/ve3wwg