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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger) Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <4tmqof$ivt@rational.rational.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171148405 references: <4tk93t$o7a@Masala.CC.UH.EDU> <01bb7e29$61e3d260$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> followup-to: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c organization: Rational Software Corporation newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c Date: 1996-07-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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