Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

On 25 Mar, 13:36, Marco <prenom_no...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > 2. Availability of resource. This is not about people on the job
> > market that are waiting to be employed, but about people that are
> > already working for the company - are they willing to learn Ada?
>
>   No - paid professionals learn whatever language is needed.

No. This is for two reasons:

1. The notion of professional identity. People naturally attach
themselves to what they're doing and how they're doing it - they say
"I'm a Java programmer", "I'm a Python programmer", "I'm an Oracle
admin", "I'm a Windows admin", etc. By saying so, they express their
association. This notion makes it difficult to introduce new
technology in the team - especially when finding a new job is easier
than learning something new. Why on earth would anybody go through the
pain of learning anything if they can just go get another job across
the street? I can easily picture a typical Java programmer moving
elsewhere rather than learning Ada.

2. The notion of investment continuity. If somebody has already
invested let's say 5 years to learn something and become proficient in
it and gained production experience and peer respect in the given
technology, it is natural for them to continue the same path. Why on
earth would anybody choose to become a *beginner* again, which does
not look like a career progression at all?

These two reasons make it difficult to introduce Ada in an existing
working environment.

If you argue that such people are not professionals, I will disagree
in advance. I know people with this kind of attitude and I consider
them to be professionals in their respective specialties.

> > 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> > Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> > are either bug-ridden or outdated.
>
>   Disagree - overpriced yes but there are good number of Ada 95 vendors out there with reasonably good products - Ada 2005 is similar to the C99 situation (new features that most compiler vendors won't implement)

The analogy does not hold for two reasons:

1. The features that are not eagerly implemented in C99 are also not
eagerly expected by users, so there is no harm in keeping the status
quo. This is different in Ada, where interfaces (or complete MI) are
already overdue some 15 years, at least. They *must* work correctly,
especially when combined with other language features.

2. Ada and C99 do not belong to the same category and do not even
target the same audiences. For a better analogy you should compare Ada
with C++, as their feature sets, target systems and potential
audiences are more aligned. Ada has to compete with C++, not with C.

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com