Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...

[rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger)]

I brought up the Mcdonald's comparison, and I'm afraid that the
analogy can only be taken so far.  In technology in particular, the
barrier to entry for new technologies is very high.  There is an
enourmous investment in C (just as there is in COBOL).  Ousting
C from (perhaps an imagined) first-place in the language wars
requires a fairly large state shift, and being one or two times
better is not enough.  You have to be an order of magnitude or more
better to overcome the inertia.  The DOS-->Windows transition
occured when there were far better platforms available (Amiga,
MacOS).  The state transition from DOS-->Windows required less
overall energy than a transition from, say DOS-->MacOS, and so
it happened.  Success begets success.  The transition from C-->C++
(if it occurs) will be because C++ offers improvements at _apparent_
low cost vs. a transition from C-->Ada.  

(I say "imagined" first place, because I continue to see statistics
that favor VBasic and/or COBOL over C, and it's not clear who to
believe...)

You can't look at market dominance from a technical standpoint
alone (your observance that McD's may really be in the child care
business is a kean observation: recent ad campaigns for McD's
target exactly that aspect).

IMHO.

--
Bob Kitzberger	      Rational Software Corporation       rlk@rational.com
http://www.rational.com http://www.rational.com/pst/products/testmate.html