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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-11-16 22:05:51 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!perez From: perez@oldcolo.com (Carlos Perez) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why don't large companies use Ada? Date: 17 Nov 1994 05:04:19 GMT Organization: Old Colorado City Communications (oldcolo.com - login "newuser") Message-ID: <3aeo8j$3ht@news-2.csn.net> References: <3a6oc5$dkh@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3aa7jo$7j@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> <3aagtj$h5g@uuneo.neosoft.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: oldcolo.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Date: 1994-11-17T05:04:19+00:00 List-Id: Steven Whatley (swhatle@starbase.neosoft.com) wrote: : ...I hated Text_Io! ... Text_Io is not part of the Ada language, but rather, a very simple standard package for doing very simple I/O. The designers of the language wanted to provide the building blocks and if you wanted something better than Text_Io, you went out and bought a "reusable" package from your favorite vendor. This secondary market never developed and so I suppose people were forced to make-do with Text_Io. I think Ada missed an important trend here-- people demand feature rich systems and so what we get are bloated, do-everything-for-everyone suites. Anyone old enough to remember when operating systems provided an interface to your system instead of zillions of applets, network functions, and application suites? Lean is out! McDouble Meat Bacon Cheesburger is in! : Also, Ada requires a extensive development environment to take advantage of : all of its features. (i.e. CASE tool, a language specific editor, a library : manager, a configuration management/version control system, etc.) News to me. The language never required an extensive CASE environment, DOS and EDLIN are all you need, really. However, most organizations who adopted Ada believed in strong software engineering processes in general, and were more likely to adopt what I call the "Ada-philosophy" which had little to do with the language itself. Hence, the use of "cumbersome" CASE tools and the linkage with Ada. I think this is called guilt by association. : many keys plus the number of ESC+control+shift+alt+meta+keypress : combinations! Personally, I did not mind that but, it is a very scary : sight. The apollo Rational emulator software was very nice. Having used a Rational from a 101 keyboard, I admit there was a steep learning curve, but once you got use to the "object oriented" keymap, an old "functional procedural" type like myself could navigate the keyboard with ease. I now see why DOS WordPerfect users stick to powerful macro and function keys. Anyways, Rational exited the hardware business and now has Apex, so you can use the mouse to manipulate pull-down menus rather than twisting your fingers into a pretzel. : A lot of people did not like the strict type checking. They felt like it : was very combersome and too restrictive. As a veteran Ada programmer, I curse and swear at the strong typing all the time--- up until I realize that I have a logic error and the Ada compiler was struggling hard to prevent me from getting into real trouble. (Like assigning floats into integers, I should think about whether I want to trunc, round, etc. rather than accept some unknown default operation). Types in Ada are like garlic, too much and you ruin your dinner (and your program). The challenge is to *think* about your data structures and use subtypes generally and types sparingly. -- Carlos