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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2702c1ed8be62863 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) Subject: Re: What ada 83 compiler is *best* Date: 1998/12/08 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 420189076 References: <3666F5A4.2CCF6592@maths.unine.ch> <87k903u4oj.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA. Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-12-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article to.reply@read.my.sig (Rick Thorne) writes: > Honestly, this is irrelevent. Whether or not we as a handful of people in > the profession like Ada has little to do with the trends. Then let's look where the real trends are. When someone asks "Is XXX a dead language, they are not at all concerned with whether or not there is a small cabal of programmers still using the language, they are concerned with the answers to three questions: 1) Are compilers available for popular and currently available hardware and operating systems? 2) Is the language itself maintained? 3) Will compilers be available for future hardware and software releases? Let's put a few languages through those filters: Ada95 Algol68 C C++ Cobol Fortran Java Pascal PL/I 1) Yes Few Yes Most Most Some Most Some Few 2) Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Soon No No 3) Yes No Yes Most Most Few Yes Few Few The only things I see as controversial in these answers are the mosts under C++ targets, which reflect experience in the embedded market, and the most and soon under Java. If you are willing to accept g++ as a viable C++ implementation, it is almost as widely available as Ada. But then I would have to extend the same "courtesy" to Pascal and Fortran, where it is IMHO not true. But in any case, the reality is that in most cases if you want widely portable code, you use Ada or C. (If it needs to run on 8-bit targets, you probably are forced to C, although there are some "8-bit" chips with Ada compilers available.) If you are targeting just data processing environments, then COBOL is an alternative. Similarly for desktop computing and C++, or number crunching and Fortran. Pascal, PL/I and Algol all were nice languages once upon a time, and there are still compilers for some popular platforms. But as choices for major projects they are as dead as IPL-V or Autocoder. Will C and Ada continue to be the only possible choices for widespread applications in the foreseeable future? With the exceptions noted above, probably. Some people think that C++ and Java will be potential choices in the near future, but I just don't see it in the embedded market. On the flip side, how long will C and Ada continue to be valid choices? I can't see a time when they won't be. There is enough momentum behind both that when new hardware is announced there will almost always be working compilers for one or both languages available. If not, both will probably be available before beta hardware. (As it happens I do know of a couple chips without a good C compiler, but the only new chips I can think in the past ten years without an available Ada compiler are some members of the TI TMS320C family. Chips without a good C++ compiler? Dozens. Without a good Java compiler? Weeelll, I could say all of them, but there do seem to be some good Java COMPILERS showing up. I just haven't tried any out.) -- Robert I. Eachus with Standard_Disclaimer; use Standard_Disclaimer; function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...