Re: Survey shows Ada not popular???

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In article <1993May5.212434.13986@newshost.lanl.gov>, hines@paloverde.lanl.gov 
(Donn Hines) writes:
*
*In article 4t2@world.std.com, srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes
:
*>    The May 1993 issue of Software Magazine, page 45, has an article on
*>4GLs.  In the article is a table that has the survey results from a survey
*>done by Sentry Market Research in which they asked corporate users which
*>language they would use after reengineering or reverse engineering their
*>existing systems.  Here are the results:
*>
*>			Cobol		37%
*>			4GLs		20%
*>			C++		16%
*>			C		15%
*>			Other		11%
*>			Ada		 5%
*>			Smalltalk	 3%
*>			Basic		 2%
*>			Fortran		 2%

My choice would be, more or less:

OPAL for the 80% of applications involving databases
C/C++ along with something like Protogen for most other applications
Assembler in extreme circumstances.

A recent InfoWorld article mentioned the problems involved in retraining/
retreading Cobol "programmers"...  same goes double for "Ada programmers/
software engineers".

*
*This "survey" simply represents what people are comfortable with. If I have a 
system
*that is doing the job I want it to, why would I want to go to the tremendous
*expense and hassles involved in retraining my people and moving to a language 
I
*know little or nothing about? Is it any suprise to anyone that in surveying 
*businesses, Cobol and databases get the majority of votes? It's what they are
*used to.
*
*I only hope Ada doesn't go the way of the Beta format for VCRs. Beta was the
*clear quality winner, yet VHS won. Uh-oh. Another thread? Or has this been has
hed
*before: Ada <-> Beta analogies. Hey! It even rhymes. Excuse me, I better go ge
t
*this copyrighted. ;-)
*
Don't worry about Ada going the way of Betamax;  it's going the way of the
Edsel.



-- 
Ted Holden
HTE