Re: The Battle of the Cultures

[att!att-out!cbnewsl!willett@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (david.c.willett)]

In article <1993Jun1.124047.16410@sei.cmu.edu>, wellerd@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (David
 Weller) writes:
> After having seen more of Greg's rantings, I begin to ask myself
> if we need a little sanity check here.  Greg's comments are
> inarguable.  More _people_ are turning to C++ for writing software.
> The demand for Ada software is decreasing with the "Peace Dividend",
> leaving Ada to fend for itself in the cold, heartless commercial
> (or as Greg would say: Non-Mandated :-) world.
> 
> The problem can be summarized in three key points (apologies to
> any real estate sellers): Culture, Culture, Culture.   Ada invariably
> seems to be the language no single developer would pick over C++ without
> being forced to (I'm generalizing here.  I'd chose Ada ANY DAY over
> C++, but I'm a sick puppy :-).  Further, Ada seems doomed as a "niche"
> language, specialized for large applications and obscure hardware
> platforms (and, as Greg would point out, until Borland or Microsoft
> start selling Ada, it will never be taken seriously in the PC world.
> Then again, as I would say: "Why take the PC market seriously?" :-).
> 
	Sorry, but I've listened to just about all the "Ada is a niche
language" drivel I care to.  I don't understand why people think that 
unless you're using, selling, and evangelizing McLanguge, (one size
fits all... coming to a store near you...) there's something 
wrong.  It happens that Ada is very good at building the kinds of systems it
was designed to build.  Specifically, it is well suited for building complex,
large, platform-independent, long-lived, mission-critical software *SYSTEMS*.
That is a very tough job, requiring a language with particular capabilities.

	Not everyone needs a language like that.  Okay, for them there are
other options.  For the military (U.S. and other nations) there are not.
It happens that Ada emphasizes and enforces discipline that is accepted as
good software engineering.  Non-military Ada users have demonstrated that 
these software engineering discipline has general benefit.  Ada has been 
shown to be successful in building systems similar to the military ones
it was designed for (e.g. Air Traffic Control).

	That's all there is to it, folks.  You build a language to solve a
particular set of problems or to work within a specfic problem domain, and
guess what?....it does well there and in domains close to it.  Does this make
it a "niche" language?  Hardly.  It simply means that the designers did their
job well.  It should be obvious by now that Fred Brooks was right, there is 
no "magic bullett".  In other words, there is no "general purpose" language,
like the one Greg seems to want.

-- 
Dave Willett          AT&T Federal Systems Advanced Technologies
A Theoretical Physicist is one whose existence is postulated to make
the numbers balance, but is never observed in the laboratory.