From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,80e8e0df8032d89e,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-09-23 09:22:41 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!news.dell.com!tadpole.com!uunet!world!srctran From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Is C/C++ the future? Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 15:55:47 GMT Date: 1994-09-23T15:55:47+00:00 List-Id: The October 1994 issue of UPSIDE (a yuppy kind of entrepreneurial magazine popular in Silicon Valley) has an article on one of the roundtable discussions of industry leaders, in this case predicting what technology will be like in the year 2000. On the panel were Gordon Bell (father of the VAX), Robert Lucky (VP of applied research at Bellcore), Nathan Myhrvold (VP of advanced technology at Microsoft), Jef Raskin (one father of the Macintosh GUI), and John Warnock (CEO of Adobe). One of the questions was: "What will be the dominant programming language?" with the following responses: BELL: Visual Basic, Mosaic markup language, C++, Cobol, Fortran, Telescript LUCKY: C++. There will be too much investment in code to change this. MYHRVOLD: C and C++ RASKIN: BASIC WARNOCK: C Admittedly a very small sample, tho from representatives of companies with a much bigger influence in determining the future of programming than anyone in the Ada Mandated world, especially in light of industry trends. As an example of what Lucky is referring to, Taligent (an IBM/Apple/HP joint effort) is releasing this summer a developer release of the TAE (Taligent Application Environment) - a collection of 100 frameworks, comprising over 2000 C++ classes and over 30,000 member functions, and who knows how many million lines of C++ code. This dwarfs anything in the non-Mandated part of the Ada world. Along with Taligent, Microsoft and Sun (whose OpenStep has already been shipped to 100,000 users - larger than the installed Ada base) are also coming out similarly large and complex C++ systems that will be adopted by large sectors of the corporate software world. Who will want to adopt other languages once companies start investing in these systems? Why switch away from these industry standards? Just to get a compiler that stops when it encounters an error? (And guess who funded tons of the academic R&D that is being used on these large C++ environments. ARPA, and it still is so funding, apparently in cahoots with the Air Force [KBSA] and the SEI. So much for military loyalty. The Ada9X academic campaign is a complete waste of time and money because ARPA already has cornered DoD influence of the academic world and ARPA has no intention of allowing any other branch of the DoD to seriously encroach on their turf with Ada). Convert? Certainly not any customer of TeamAda member IBM. IBM's future OO plans will be based on its' VisualAge and VisualGen. To supplement these tools, IBM intends to get back into the compiler business in a big way with C++, object oriented Cobol and perhaps even object oriented PL/1. Also coming are Smalltalk, object oriented REXX, Visual RPG and Microsoft's Visual Basic. IBM intends to deliver fully compatible versions of most compilers across all its strategic systems, which now includes OS/2, AIX, OS/400 and MVS. BUT NOT ADA!!!!!!! Imagine IBM prefering an object oriented REXX over Ada. Having milked all of the Ada pork it can out of the DoD, why should IBM invest in a dead-end language? Why should anyone, if as the DualUse plan shows, even the DoD is unwilling to invest in commercializing Ada? Don't believe me? Well, someone is giving a very rational lecture at the upcoming weeklong C++ WORLD conference (Austin, TX, 11/14-11/18) on rules of thumb for managing industrial-strength object-oriented C++ projects. It will probably be full of rational tips for using some company's products as a rationale for using C++ on these large OO projects that are dominating industry. Obviously this rational lecture reflects a rational trend by rational corporate software developers, many of whom will be using either Taligent's, Microsoft's, or Sun's environments and need strong C++ tools, rationally. Nothing DISA and the ASA is doing with its DualUse plans will have any effect (assuming they care to measure) whatsoever on industry use of Ada. All their plans will do is to further entrench Ada as a niche language for those very large, critical systems that are too rare to be a basis for a thriving industry. Other than for that need, both outside and INSIDE the DoD, Ada won't be used, no matter how many meaningless and conflicting mandates the DoD issues (like Mosemann's AI memo that strategically ommitted mentioning Ada, probably the inspiration for the Defense Science Board not to cover Ada in its study). Greg Aharonian