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 Aug 93 16:08:32 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Ada last place in programming language census Message-ID: List-Id: 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