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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7ee10ec601726fbf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-08 08:02:52 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: is Ada dying? Date: 8 Oct 2001 08:02:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0110080702.5a3392e7@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1002553372 26922 127.0.0.1 (8 Oct 2001 15:02:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Oct 2001 15:02:52 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:13928 Date: 2001-10-08T15:02:52+00:00 List-Id: "Ralph M?itz" wrote in message news:... > I'm just starting out learning Ada, but it seems Ada is dying. From what I > can see very few people use Ada, out of about 15 000 projects on > Sourceforge only 32 are written in Ada! I think that's sad, and now that > Ada's parents (the U.S DoD) are dropping Ada 95 what does the future hold > in store? Is it worthwhile learning a language nobody appreciates or uses? Isn't it odd in this field that if a technology is not dominant (by number of applications), then it is considered dead (examples, Pascal, PL/1, OS/2 ... all of which are alive and used for many important applications). The trade press has even announced that Java is dead on the client side, and no doubt given Microsoft's decision to exclude Java from XP, will pronounce it completely dead. Sometimes people even decide that widely used technologies are dead. I once heard a high up official in the DoD tell me that no one outside the DoD used COBOL any more (that statement was made over a year ago!) The U.S. DoD is not "dropping Ada", to think this is as wrong as to think that everyone in the DoD was using Ada during the mandate. The actual fact is that, not at all surprisingly, some people in the DoD like Ada, and fight to do as much as possible in Ada, and some people in the DoD dislike it, and fight to do as much as possible in some other language (C++ or even Java). Ada is certainly not dead, and use of Ada will continue for a long time. Will usage increase or decrease? Hard to say. Here at Ada Core Technologies, we see a steady increase in use. This can of course be due to three factors a) people updating from Ada 83 to Ada 95 b) people shifting from other Ada technologies to GNAT c) new projects being started in Ada We certainly know some projects that are in category c, but it is hard to know what the division between these three is. In any case, regardless of what other vendors do, ACT expects to be supporting Ada for a long time to come, and to continue to do active development and enhancements to the GNAT technology (we already have a long list of enhancements that have been made for version 3.15). As you know from our web site, 3.14 also had a long list of enhancements (and we expect to see 3.14 public versions out soon for selected targets). If you want to learn a dominant technology that is very widely used, I would suggest Visual Basic or COBOL, there is a big demand for people in both areas, and these are still among the most widely used languages. But if you want to learn Ada, you will find that a) You acquire skills and knowledge that are useful not only in Ada, but in other arenas. b) There are definitely jobs for competent Ada programmers. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies