From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 4 Jun 93 17:15:50 GMT From: agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl. gov!taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil!shimeall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (timothy shimeall) Subject: Re: How to Make Ada more widely used? Message-ID: List-Id: In article srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes: > Simple. Drop the Ada Mandate. It is an artificial distortion of the >marketplace that has sheltered Ada from competition with other languages. >Compiler prices are uncompetitive with those of other languages, no one >is producing the Ada add-on libraries so useful for development in other >worlds because there is no market. Not only is the Ada Mandate bad >economics, but it is also bad policy, as evidence by the ongoing defections >from following by many inside the armed forces. In short, because of Ada >policies and not because of the language itself, Ada is uncompetitive and >not attractive enough to be more widely used. However, the Ada Mandate has also allowed the armed forces to drop maintenance of litterally thousands of special-purpose compilers, created during the 60s and 70s to support development of single projects. It has also allowed a large decrease in maintenance-programmer-training costs... In short, the ORIGINAL purpose of the Ada Mandate, to allow DoD to move to a small subset of languages (Ada, and selected others where economically necessary) from the pre-Ada hugely multilingual days. Tell us Greg: If the Ada Mandate is dropped, how is DoD to retain the small-language-set benefits? Factor into your calculations that there IS NO STANDARD for many commonly-used languages (incl. C and C++) , and, in fact, there are large portability problems for non-trivial non-Ada-based applications across even rather similar environments. (Right now, I'm trying to port the Aegis project-control system from Sun to Iris, and the bug-chasing is annoyingly complex...) Given the DoD radical maintenance requirements, this may be a serious concern. The fact of the matter is that Ada is MEANT to be a niche language. The language sponsors, DoD, don't much care (except where it impacts their costs) if Ada EVER is a huge commercial success. Even as it is today, it is VERY useful in the DoD context. Tim Disclaimer: The preceding is NOT an official statement for any governmental or nongovernmental organization. It is a personal opinion of the author.