Re: Another nail in Ada's coffin or an opportunity?

[tmoran@bix.com]

  Hypercard.
A few years ago Hypercard on the Macintosh was as fashionable as Java
is today.  Has it taken over the world as predicted?  Journalists make
their living writing exciting articles, not producing successful
software.  Any correlation between the goals is rather random.

>mainstream languages such as C, C++, and Java.
>...
>comprehensive retraining of a development team,
  Java, and C++ if used in an OO fashion rather than as yet another C
compiler, certainly do require comprehensive retraining of a development
team, so this is an argument in favor of Basic, C, COBOL, and, yes, Ada.

>to completion on schedule without the leverage of a vital and innovative
>tools-and-components aftermarket.
  Perhaps the author is simply unaware of the 'vital and innovative
tools and components' offered for Ada.  Or does 'vital and innovative'
mean 'lots of ad space in this magazine'?  And surely the size of a
'components' market is dictated more by the application area than the
language.  It's hard to imagine, for instance, a wide open market for
'jumbo jet control' software components, regardless of language.

>Look at any successful programming
>language technology in use today, and you will find that it offers
>enterprise development these advantages.
   By "successful programming language" does the author mean COBOL?
Or Fortran or C or Ada or some flavor of Basic?  Surely she can not be
refering to C++ or Java, since there is little (no?) experience of
successful large projects written in either on which to base her
assertion.  Observation suggests that, contrary to her assertion,
large projects have been done by large companies using mostly in-house
technology rather than purchased tools and components.