Re: Universities in the US

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

Or more accurately, some languages hang on like the California Condor - only
a dozen or so in existence with a small team of admirers struggling
valiantly to keep them alive. :-)

Seriously, its hard to see any languages *totally* disappear from any use at
all. However, usage can drop so low that it falls below the radar horizon.
(No jobs, not much teaching/learning of it, only a handful of projects in
obscure corners of the universe using it.) Languages can fall into niche
markets where there are some jobs, some academic usage and some active
interest in starting new projects in it. Ada kind of falls in that
category - not invisible, just not the hottest language in use.

Now that I am being forced (once again!) to program in C, I really realize
how much I miss Ada. As much complaining as I've done about Ada's
representation clauses - I now want to take it all back! I've got very
nearly *nothing* in C to help me with data representation. The level of pain
is so high in comparison to even *weak* support for representation in Ada,
that I absolutely cannot fathom why embedded programmers love C so much and
ignore Ada?

Perceptually speaking, I think Ada is experiencing some resurgence of
interest in the programming community. Especially with student programmers.
Perhaps there is becoming a realization that C/C++/Java/etc. just don't
offer as many nice features as Ada does for serious, industrial-strength,
larger-scale development. Hopefully, the trend will continue.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Kevin Rigotti" <rigotti@atc.dera.gov.uk> wrote in message
news:9drq8e$4ci$1@trog.dera.gov.uk...
> I learnt functional programming in Hope, but have never seen it in a job
> advert. Similarly, I learned how to do distributed programming in Conic
and
> haven't seen it since. They're never truly gone I suppose because the
ideas
> get recycled but branches do drop off the evolutionary tree sometimes.