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=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,86616b1931cbdae5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: jsa@alexandria.organon.com (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ? Date: 1997/07/22 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 258182894 Distribution: world References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> <33D416AA.4622C3C8@kaiwan.com> Organization: PSINet Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-07-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <33D416AA.4622C3C8@kaiwan.com> safetran writes: > >Stanley Allen writes: > >Worries #1 and #3 would also be facing you if you choose C++ or Java. > > I would not be worried about C++ that much. Considering the volume of > C++ code produced and the number of programmers of C++ its going to be > around for quite a while. I think he was referring to compiler _companies_. You have no guarantee that these companies will not fold and take their compilers with them. > >As to (3), whether your code is maintainable or not depends on whether it > >is maintainable code. > > I was not very clear here : yes Ada is very maintainable but if (in 10 > years) you can't find programmers who know the language then it does not > really matter how maintainable the language is. This is not going to be a problem. IMO, the situation is going to get better. > Its just that if you hire someone and he has to learn a new language - > well that is additional cost vs hiring someone who already knows it. Yes, it is easy to hire a C/C++/Java 1 day wonder. And cheaply too. Someone who was flipping burgers a week before, got C/C++/Java for dummies or C/C++/Java in 5 days and is, voila', now a programmer who "knows" it. > Brian Rogoff writes: > >How many languages *haven't* survived? Cobol, Fortran, C, PL/1, and REXX > >are still thriving. There is even a company selling Algol 68 compilers. > > My question was not survival as just survival - but more will Ada become > a bit more mainstream or at least stay as "mainstream" as it is today. > I agree with you that all these languages have survived but how > mainstream are they compared to (say) C/C++. How mainstream is C/C++ compared to (say) VB?? Or Excel macro language?? Not very. Yes this is a fatuous comparison - just like yours. > Yes you are correct. However a lot of safety critical systems are > being done in C/C++. And it wouldn't surprise me that "a lot" are being done in VB. I know for a fact that some are done in Excel. > A lot of medical electronics company's, the car industry, rail-road > industry etc etc do their safety critical systems in C Actually, the car industry still uses a lot of assembly. GM used/uses an offshoot of M2. It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know of C actually being used in by the auto makers in this sort of area. > Please do not mis-understand - I am not endorsing any of the above or > saying it is good practice. Just that this is how things are. Here's my take: If you want to use Ada - use it. Don't worry about whether it's going "to be around" or something. That's not an issue. If you don't want to use it, don't. /Jon -- Jon Anthony OMI, Belmont, MA 02178 617.484.3383 "Nightmares - Ha! The way my life's been going lately, Who'd notice?" -- Londo Mollari