* Ada last place in programming language census
@ 1993-08-04 16:08 Gregory Aharonian
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Gregory Aharonian @ 1993-08-04 16:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
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]).
--
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada last place in programming language census
@ 1993-08-04 18:14 agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!c
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!c @ 1993-08-04 18:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <CB8su9.JpI@world.std.com>,
Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com> wrote:
>
> 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
Boy, the database folks must find this discouraging: only SQL made
the list (no clipper, dbase, etc.). No Simscript, Algol, Modula 2, LISP,
or Prolog, either.
Gee, Ada is actually doing rather well! 14th place isn't bad - given
the languages that didn't even make the list.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada last place in programming language census
@ 1993-08-06 5:41 cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!elro
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!elro @ 1993-08-06 5:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
>
> As part of the research for my recent proposal that the Ada community
>
....... stuff deleted
> 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?
That C++ is 6.8312 times more used than Ada
That Cobol is 5.673 times more used that c++
That Cobol is therefor 6.8312*5.673 times more used than Ada
(btw that = 38.753445 times more)
I suppose that may be expected though as Cobol was used by
Noah on the Ark's Ticket booking system. And C++/C is taught
in universities
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada last place in programming language census
@ 1993-08-09 18:16 cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr. @ 1993-08-09 18:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
>
> 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?
Most of all, we can conclude that old habits are hard to break. The top
four langauges have all been around since I was probably a kid. The people
who have been taught those langauges will want to continue to use them
because they are proficient in them. Ada, C, and C++ haven't been as long
( well maybe C - circa 1972) and the software culture hasn't accepted them as
readily yet.
Ada, C and C++ are all good languages. In some cases, C might be better
than Ada, in other other cases, I would certainly prefer Ada. We have
a 100k+ flight management system that could be done in C, but would
probably take us more time to integrate and debug. The interfaces in a
large system is what has always given us the most problems, and Ada
pounded those out in a hurry, so it has helped us a great deal there.
Ada isn't the langauge for every program since each program has different
needs. I have found it to be quite good for most embedded applications,
although I would like something other than unchecked_conversion for
twiddling the bits (C is good for that!).
I think this is why think you couldn't reasonably get 100%
compliance from the mandate. Eveything in Ada is like saying everyone in
the Gov't has to drive a Ford - even if a Ford isn't the best vehicle for
the job. I am developing a Software Design Document generator for our
program and I am doing it in Turbo Pascal. Why? Because I don't have an Ada
compiler for my PC at home (or at work), and the TP compilers have long
been cheap and reliable, plus I already have code that I can reuse to
generate this document. So, in this case - Turbo Pascal was the best
choice for me. I have Turbo C, but my library of routines is not as
developed as my Pascal library, and I am not as proficient in C as Pascal.
I also have a deadline - which makes it harder for me to want to fight
with the C compiler - which is much slower on my machine, than the TP
compiler. All these things made it cost effective to do it in TP - which
was close at hand and portable (but not Ada).
Enough ranting - hopefully our Gov't can see that even though Ada is a
good langauge, mandating it in every application is not a good idea.
It is a good idea to encourage reuse through the use of a single
language, and to standardize software development, but to force every
program to use only Ada (we have assembly in our Ada runtime) is to be
ignorant of all other software technology.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Todd A Sorensen Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems Division
505-828-5611 internet: tsorense@dasd.honeywell.com
internet: tas@dasd.honeywell.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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