Ada last place in programming language census

[world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian)]

 
    As part of the research for my recent proposal that the Ada community
jointly sponsor a series of ads in Computerworld publicizing Ada (for which
I have gotten very few replies), the people at Computerworld sent to me
a copy of the readership profile, which includes a survey of programming
language use.  Once a year they survey their readers, and among other things,
find out which languages they are involved with.  This involvement could
include actual use of the language, managing of people using the language,
purchase and analysis of language products, etc.
 
    Here are the results for the August 1992 survey:
 
                         Cobol          405,325
                         Basic          332,786
                         Assembler      309,163
                         Fortran        266,912
                         RPG II         163,443
                         Pascal         162,391
                         C              160,295
                         SQL            154,814
                         SAS            147,365
                         PL/1           114,340
                         C++             71,448
                         RPG II          69,529
                         APL             18,185
                         Ada             10,459
 
    What can we conclude?  First, that the Computerworld community is a
great source of people who we can pitch the benefits of Ada to, people
using more "primitive" languages, people for the most part not having
bought Ada products (as opposed to Tri-Ada).
 
    Second, it would be very worthwhile for someone who is being funded
to actually care about Ada to contact Computerworld and find out what
these figures have been for the last ten years, to determine trends.
My guess is that the C/C++ share has been growing steadily, while some
of the older languages like RPG, PL/1, Pascal and Assembler have been
decreasing.  Also the C/C++ share is about twenty times larger than the
Ada share, which discounting by a factor of two due to Mandated use,
corroborates my guess that Ada use is forty to fifty times less than C/C++
outside the Mandated world.
 
    Third, for anyone who knows anything about microeconomics and the
concept of the "multiplier-effect" of government and corporate expenditures,
will realize that Ada's 10,459 share in this community is stark evidence of
the total apathy of those inside the Mandated World (spending billions on
Ada projects and research) towards fostering the use of Ada outside the
Mandated world.  (This data also buttresses the arguments made in SEI's long
suppressed report on national software infrastructure and national security,
[suppression on whose orders I have never been able to find out]).
-- 
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 Greg Aharonian
 Source Translation & Optimization
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178