Re: Java portability

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

Oh, I think most of us would accept that Ada has superior safety features
and that this is important. I think Stanley Allen drew the analogy to a
Volvo in an article on AdaPower. He also observed that Volvo had to add some
"Sex Appeal" features because people weren't buying it in droves.

I'm not saying that lack of safety is a sex appeal feature. I'll bet that
Volvos may have gotten sexier but that underneath it all there is still a
lot of safety engineering.

I think I'd suggest that the fundamentals of Ada are very superior to the
fundamentals of most other general purpose languages. I'd even suggest that
it had a lot of features that other languages don't have. (Tasking &
generics come to mind - analogous to a Borg Warner T-56 six speed racing
transmission and an Edelbrock Nitrous Oxide System) Those are all wonderful
language attributes, but somewhere along the line the buyer seems to want
plush velour seats, a hood scoop, wheel flares and a spoiler and doesn't
want them to look like someone installed them with a pop-rivet gun and
sprayed Rustoleum on it. The parallel with Ada would be all of the
dingleberries hanging around other languages in the way of development
tools. They've got them and we don't - at least not in the spiffy package
that the buyer has come to expect.

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/


"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com> wrote in message
news:3B619A6D.5DD6E782@home.com...
> I'd like to offer a slightly different "analogy" :
>
> _flamesuit on_
>
> The shopper looks at the Ada car, and notices that it has seatbelts and
> of course 4 doors on it. The programmer says, but I don't want to be
> restrained from accessing the outdoors -- I go through drive-throughs
> a lot..
>
> The shopper than goes down the street and settles on the C++ car
> which does not have the restrictive seat belts, and of course,
> _NO_ doors to get in the way ;-)  The Java car has seatbelts, but
> no doors...
>
> _flamesuit off_