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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,54889de51045a215 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-21 05:45:20 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F952A59.5090001@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: += in ada References: <1066224357.499523@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1066231159.711433@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1066311805.222491@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F8F3077.60402@comcast.net> <3F900F35.50203@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:45:20 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.67.11 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1066740320 165.247.67.11 (Tue, 21 Oct 2003 05:45:20 PDT) mcondic@mindspring.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 05:45:20 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1279 Date: 2003-10-21T12:45:20+00:00 List-Id: With the initial target being embedded programming for military systems, there were some very real problems with Ada: It was too big for many of the processors of its time (and still is for a lot of small embedded processors). There was a general lack of good quality compilers that would target those processors (and you *really* needed very high quality code generation - remember all those efficiency things surrounding Ariane 4 and the hand optimizations?) Ada missed supporting things that were seen as "critical" to embedded programming - unsigned integers, and/or/xor on words, etc. (And I'll spare Robert the jab about the lack of sqrt :-) Ada promised a lot to embedded developers (Chapter 13) but was very late in delivering it. Developers had lots of specialized tools surrounding their embedded projects and Ada wasn't there with replacements. Ada was ahead of compiler technology and the hardware on which to run the compilers and nobody was willing to "subset" the language to get some portion of it working reliably & efficiently in a reasonable time frame, etc., etc., etc. Add to this some perceptual problems backed up by reality initially, but they took a long time to cure. Various language constructs were viewed as inherently inefficient - backed up by poor quality compilers. Ada was viewed as outrageously expensive and too grandeose for embedded programming - backed up by outrageously expensive compilers and lack of implementations for embedded targets. That list goes on too. Toss in a major factor of psychology: Embedded programmers are (or at least tended to be back then - maybe attitudes have shifted) "Bit Twiddlers". Basically guys who get tied up in the small stuff and often miss the "Big Picture". They were used to dealing in raw words and bytes with shifts and rotates and such. Ada brought to it a discipline they weren't used to and didn't like as they saw it standing in their way. The value of strong typing in particular was not seen as "user friendly". They tried to write "Adatran" code and found it difficult. So they saw Ada as some obstacle that was being forced on them by people who knew nothing about how the job was really done. At that point they hated Ada and no amount of fixing other problems with the language was going to get them to start liking it. That and various bad management decisions on the part of the powers that be who were trying to create/promote Ada, and you had a pretty horrible reputation right out of the starting gate. This reputation spread like wildfire and has been *enormously* hard to overcome. Some of it is reality and some of it is myth, but in the world of "Marketing" - "Perception *IS* Reality". Hence - back on subject - I see no reason to believe that adding trivial syntax changes is going to in any way win over the crowd that hated Ada for a hell of a lot bigger things than lack of a "+=" operator. MDC Hyman Rosen wrote: > > > So what do you think the "real" reasons are? > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================