Marketing Ada: Is the Sky Falling?

[pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)]

The new issue of ACM LISP Pointers just arrived, with a nice article by
Richard E. Waters titled, "The Survival of Lisp: either we share, or it
dies". It explains the "C/C++ versus the World" battle from the view of
[one person from] the LISP community. There are interesting parallels to
what is going on in the Ada community. 

Is the dominance of C/C++ making all other languages marginal, leading
them to an accelerating spiral of decline. Will these language survive? Will
they survive in niche markets but not prosper (too few companies devoting too
little effort to improving products)?  Is this the equivalent of "survival of
the fitest" or "language genocide"?  We already know the PC implications [pun
intended] of such a course of events.

Maybe it is time for a serious meeting to discuss how to contain C/C++, not
because it is a bad language [insert your own version of a smiley here], but
because we don't want it to grow so large that it becomes the only
well-supported language.

Rich


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Richard E. Pattis                     "Programming languages are like
  Looking for a Job                      pizzas - they come in only "too"
					 size: too big and too small.