Re: is Ada dying?

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

"Robert*@" wrote:
> 
> Ada makes a perfect replacment for COBOL.
> 
> If we can target COBOL programmers (instead of the C/C++/Java ones), 
> we will win in the end.

Might need some kind of mainframe Ada for big IBM machines running
the OS's that big commercial IBM mainframe shops usually use to
run their COBOL applications. 

> 
> I find it very strange that Ada is not used much in business 
> applications, and more strange it is not used much in financial 
> applications. people will actually use C to divid numbers and compute 
> decimals and not Ada. very strange world we live in.

Very strange world, indeed.  A few years back, when I tried to use
the COBOL interface package that came with one Ada 95 compiler,
I found that it didn't work.  When I tried to figure out why, I found
that the source code for the packed decimal features was broken as 
designed,  and that it probably couldn't have worked at all to provide 
any interface to packed decimal data.  This was not a brand new 
product, and the interface features are frequently mentioned among the
major advantages of Ada.  But maybe they don't get a lot of use.  
Maybe they don't get any use.  IDK.


Al