Re: The future of Ada is at risk

["Nasser Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>]

"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message 
news:wccodbxnb8b.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> "Nasser Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> writes:
>
>> I'd love to use Ada for Scientific and numerical applications, but is has
>> limited standard libraries for this.
>
> What do you think of the Ada 2005 additions in the numerics
> area?
>
> - Bob

There was a talk here about Ada 2005 and numeric 5 months ago. Here was my 
little comment on it in this thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/c3d0e99376a4f379/86d9c043bd88a9d1?hl=en&lnk=st&q=Interested+about+number+crunching+in+Ada#86d9c043bd88a9d1

I think Ada is great for numerical work, as a language. The problem is that 
the function set and libraries for this sort of work are too small for Ada. 
Compare for example work being done using Python for scientific computing

http://www.scipy.org/

Now many people, it seems, are starting to use python for numerical work (I 
don't, I use Mathematica, Maple and Matlab mostly). But there is even an 
open source computer algebra system (sage) which uses python.  (Is python, 
at the language level, better designed than Ada for this sort of work? I do 
not think so, but it has much more libraries and packages than Ada does).

I do not think it is enough to have good language. What is more needed are 
more libraries and packages that come with it.  I think Ada 2005 does good 
job in improving this situation, but it is still too limited, when compared 
to what one can do with other systems.

It is also possible that dynamic and interpretive languages/environments is 
what becoming popular, due to the flexibility they offer the user: issue a 
command, and see the result right away, plot a function and see the result 
right there, and the old edit/compile/link/run type languages are becoming 
less popular.

Nasser