Re: New Language Design: (Cray, Sun prep radical software models for petaflops systems)

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Depending on what one wants to use as a measure of "Success" - one might 
judge Ada to be a failure. Ada was supposed to be designed for embedded 
software development and was supposed to be used for mission critical 
DoD applications. By the first goal, Ada is a miserable failure when 
"other" ranks higher than "Ada" in just about every survey of embedded 
developers when asked "What language do you use?" As for the "Mission 
Critical DoD" apps? The developers had to be drug into Ada kicking and 
screaming and as soon as The Mandate was lifted they began to abandon it 
in droves. So by those measures, Ada is a failure.

OTOH, Ada has evolved into a very powerful OO programming language, has 
several good quality compilers out there and is getting used in a number 
of domains that it wasn't originally targeted for. It has a small, but 
dedicated following and it is finding new developers every day. It is 
successful in the sense that it has users and tools and has the 
*potential* to gain more widespread use. I think it needs to do more to 
secure a larger audience or that small, yet dedicated, following is 
likely to dwindle. Life expectancy for a language depends to a large 
extent on a nebulous thing called "Industry Support" - Ada has just 
enough to keep it alive - for now - but long term, it needs to get more 
if it wants to stay alive.

MDC


Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> 
> I find it interesting that they classified "Ada"
> as a failure, and are looking at ways to extend
> "Fortran" (of all things) and C++.


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Marin David Condic
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