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: 103376,86616b1931cbdae5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: herwin@osf1.gmu.edu (HARRY R. ERWIN) Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ? Date: 1997/07/30 Message-ID: <5rnige$5d1@portal.gmu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 260584058 References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> <33D3EC6E.7920@gsg.eds.com> <33DD01FA.247D@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> Organization: George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-07-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: W. Wesley Groleau x4923 (wwgrol@pseserv3.fw.hac.com) wrote: : > > How many languages *haven't* survived? : > FWIW, plenty: ALGOL 58, COMIT, COMTRAN, FACT, IPL-V, NELLIAC, SIMULA, : > TRAC and many more. I don't expect Ada to die in 10 years, but there : > is ample precedent. >From my obsolete or dying list: ALGOL 60, ALGOL 68, PL/I, APL, SNOBOL, Pascal, CLU, Modula-2, Modula-3, JOVIAL, Prolog, Smalltalk-80. I'm sure some people will beg to differ. : I am aware of a 5 Mega-SLOC Ada project that used SIMULA quite a bit : for modeling and prototyping, 1988-1994 Simula is wonderful for simulation, in some ways retaining advantages over C++ and other more modern object-oriented programming languages. (Smalltalk isn't bad, either.) Neither scale well. Ada 83 lacks support for a lot of the constructs (e.g., coroutines, abstract data types, inheritance, and dynamic binding; tools to support event scheduling, activity scanning, and process interaction models; the integration of continuous simulation) that serious simulation programming requires. (I've seen one simulation programming environment ported to Ada 83 as a result of the mandate. It was hilariously clumsy and completely nonviable.) -- Harry Erwin, Internet: herwin@gmu.edu, Web Page: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~herwin PhD student in computational neuroscience (how bats echolocate) Lecturer for CS 211 (data structures and advanced C++) Senior Software Analyst supporting the FAA