Re: is ada dead?

["Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewandoREMOVE@attglobal.net>]

"Adrian Hoe" <byhoe@greenlime.com> wrote in message news:9ff447f2.0107061757.34ca0723@posting.google.com...
> Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<3B460DA9.C2965042@ix.netcom.com>...
 > Ada is dead in Malaysia. One of UTM's (University of Technology
> Malaysia) KL campus was teaching and promoting Ada with a lot of
> confidence couple years ago when they were a joint-venture with
> Thomson CSF. Recently, I found that they had deserted Ada and switch
> to Java for the reason that there is no Ada market in Malaysia.
> ANother reason came from one of the senior lecturer was that Ada was
> too old. I told the senior lecturer I could not believe what he was
> saying because they were so confident about Ada.
[....]
> In universities (Malaysian, Ok?), programming languages are taught not
> because of teching the students of programming concepts, but for the
> sake of market requirement. That's the most pathetic and irresponsible
> decision.

You are in a good society. I was once teaching Real Time Programming and was
using Ada. This was at not that bad U.S. University. Once, after the end of semester
students brought to the Dean collection of Classified from local newspapers and
asked him to find at least one job as that would require Ada. Dean was smart enough
to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was
smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C.

This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada
programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL.
Students invest quite substantial amount of money to get a degree, and yes, they
expect that this investment will bring some return. Generally, there is little room
to study for "scientific pleasure". They are studying to get skills that will position
them well on the job market. They will not learn Ada just this is a "better language".
They will study the language that is visible on the market.

What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost
of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say,
Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure
of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop
one zero from their price list.

A.L.