Re: Point a beginner in the right direction? Cheap bare-board to run with a RTOS for running ADA

[Eryndlia Mavourneen <eryndlia@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 5:17:08 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote
> 
> Ada never will be accepted by the majority, for the very simple reason that 
> the "majority" are programming in Javascript and PHP, maybe Ruby or Python 
> for big projects. Moreover, the "majority" doesn't give a damn about getting 
> anything right, they'll just use rapid updates to change it until it sort-of 
> works. None of which could reasonably be replaced by Ada.
> 
> > The way to get people interested in Ada is to expose them to Ada _before_
> > they have made a large investment in other languages and have learned to
> > work around the issues associated with those other languages.
> 
> But that's never been true historically, and it's even less true today. Back 
> in the 70s and 80s, people started with Basic of one sort or another. A few 
> lucky ones started with Turbo Pascal. Hardly anyone started with Ada (or 
> even Java).
> 
> Now, people are going to start with Javascript or PHP, because what they're 
> going to want to do is going to be associated with the web.
> 
> > You are still going to get people like myself interested (people who know
> > those more mainstream languages, but also actively look for other safer
> > languages), but the result of your worldview is that by the time many
> > people are working on projects which you think are large enough to be
> > considered for Ada use, then those people are just going to use the
> > languages they are familiar with because they understand those languages
> > and their issues even though Ada may indeed be a better fit.
> >
> > There's a hell of a lot of good stuff in Ada which deserves to be more
> > widely used, but a number of people here don't seem to understand that
> > their ossified attitudes turn away potential newcomers while those same
> > same people are moaning about the lack of new people interested in Ada.
> >
> > I'm frustrated because I see places it would be _very_ nice to use Ada,
> > but also see that some existing attitudes within the established Ada
> > community are a major blocker stopping people trying Ada.
> >
> > The people who you might interest in Ada today have a very different
> > experience in terms of hardware platforms and projects than what you
> > seem to be used to. If you want those people to start becoming interested
> > in Ada, you need to make Ada relevant to the way they work and their
> > interests.
> 
> I spent 25 years of my life trying to get Ada more widely used by the 
> masses. And lots of others at places like Aonix did the same. We have almost 
> nothing to show for those efforts. Indeed, we seem to have more interest now 
> rather than in the past now that everyone has given up those efforts. Which 
> suggests to me, at least, that those efforts were counterproductive. Where 
> AdaCore seems to have been more successful is in giving away free stuff as a 
> side-effect of their paying work. But that of course presumes that there is 
> paying work...
> 
> I could see a lot of value to an Ada-like language for smaller machines. 
> Just don't call it Ada, and you'll probably have a winner. (So many people 
> have a knee-jerk hate of Ada, even though they've never used it, it's bets 
> to distance one from the name.) That's not going to do anything for Ada 
> proper.
> 
> You don't like the view that I get from my 33 years of Ada experience, and 
> that's fine. Feel free to prove me wrong, but if you fail, remember that I 
> told you that you would fail. And don't expect me to encourage anyone else 
> to waste their time on what I view as a losing endevour.
> 
>                                            Randy.

In my experience (over 40+ years), people gravitate to a language b/c
1) They can afford it.  This usually means free.
2) It is easy to learn and use.
   A well-defined "official" subset to get them "hooked" wouldn't hurt.
   This may exist now. I don't know.
3) Way cool tools and APIs (Android?) for doing way cool things.
4) Buy-in by major vendors; however, I do not see this as happening until (2) and (3) garner enough interest from the developers who are employed by these major vendors.

Number (3) -- the built-in tools (annexes, attributes, etc.) -- caught my attention first, and then I found out that the language was going to be supported by the major vendors of the time -- IBM and DEC in particular.

It certainly wouldn't hurt for a MicroSoft or a Google or a Yahoo to decide to use it internally; there certainly are many reasons to begin doing so:  The bug repair list seems to get larger rather than smaller.  Perhaps one of these giants could be persuaded to "try it out" on a small but important project.  The positive results and personnel could then be used for another project, then another, ....

Btw, I started with FORTRAN and IBM 360 Assembly Language.  I also have used C extensively but also C++, COBOL, PL/I, RPG, Delphi (Object Pascal), SNOBOL4 (and the SPITBOL compiler for SNOBOL4), Icon, a few other assembly languages, etc.  None of these stopped me from immediately recognizing the beauty and practicality of Ada, even before there were compilers available.  And this was just from thumbing through the LRM in the bookstore!

I really don't believe that an existing, ensconced language is going to keep people from switching, if they see the utility in doing so, and it is possible to get a job using the "new" language.  I believe the coolness factor of great tools for specific jobs (like web page creation) can overcome many negative perceptions.  Don't forget the countless number of independent web developers who *will* use the next great tool, if it does (or has a library to do) what they need and want.  We see this all the time.

-- Eryndlia