Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

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

Marin David Condic wrote:

> "Jim Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:3C58AE09.7070503@worldnet.att.net...
> 
>>article I find one assumption is that people know Ad as
>>well as C, and have made a conscious decision toward C and
>>away from Ada. I do not believe this assumption is even
>>approximately true.
>>
> Some part of the decision may be subconscious - many people just use what
> they know or what has gone before or what came with their development board.
> Others may have given Ada passing consideration, having heard rumors about
> it, etc. and at least consciously said "I don't want to use Ada because..."
> Still others may have given serious evaluation to Ada and even considered it
> to be superior in many respects, but abandoned it because they just couldn't
> get it for the platforms for which they were developing. (Remember, this was
> about embedded systems in particular. This makes the picture significantly
> different from workstation/PC development.)


I think that even for those people that gave Ada an honest try, they still
tend to slide back into what they know best. Not only does one have to learn
the language, but they need time to discover the standard packages and the
different ways things need to be done in Ada (due to its software engineering
restrictions that are enforced). People will make a feeble attempt to start
something, and then hit a wall. Time runs out and they abandon the new approach
for a known one, in order to get the job done.

Only a desire to master it will overcome this type of resistance. Education in
Ada in Universities is another bright spot, because Ada will be hopefully what
new recruits will want to fall back to.

But I agree, that for many, Ada is just some rumour they have heard about.

>>My contention is that Ada has never slid into oblivion.
>>In fact, Ada is slowly climbing out of the initial
>>oblivion into which it was born.
>>
> It may be climbing out of oblivion - but probably more in the Workstation/PC
> application world than in the embedded world. 


As systems get more complicated, and people become concerned about software
quality, I sure hope that it is "climbing out of oblivion".  In all the years
that have passed since the first computers were built, software is still very
much a sesspool of unreliability. The difference today IMO, is that we are
building towers on shaky buggy foundations.

...

> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg