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: 103376,908bd475d3545aad X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: PL/SQL -> Ada Date: 2000/03/28 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 603486150 References: <38DD3CA8.BF122672@wa8tzg.org> <38DE46E8.756F5A66@quadruscorp.com> <38DEB5C4.64CACCCC@wa8tzg.org> <38DF90E0.7BE629DD@quadruscorp.com> <38DFFEAE.8C694C4E@wa8tzg.org> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 954263899 218 bpr@206.184.139.136 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-03-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Bill Meahan wrote: > Brian Rogoff wrote: > > > For better or worse, many programmers will migrate to tools which are > > superficially similar to tools that they already know (witness Java). > > Precisely my point! So why aren't PL/SQL programmers migrating to Ada > en' masse? I'm trying to :-) I suspect because many PL/SQL programmers are really *just* database programmers, and Ada is really a general purpose language. Many PL/SQL programmers don't need Ada or C++ since the specialized tools for their domain are substantially more productive if you don't need to do more than DB programming. Have you taken a look at the Ada 95 DB bindings? I'm interested in how much more work you think needs to be done to make a decent open source tool that could aid in your Ada evangelism. > BTW Besides PL/SQL I've programmed in Fortran (II, IID, IV, IVG, IVH, > 66, 77) numerous dialects of Assembler from SPS to 8080 to 32-bit minis, > FOCAL, BASIC (regular and Visual varieties), Perl, C, PIL, SH/KSH, Excel > Macro, Remedy declarations and probably some others I've long since > forgotten. 35+ years of programming is a long time :-) Indeed. However, I'm of the opinion that if possible it is better to work in *very* different programming languages to expand your mental problem solving toolset. I actually consider Ada, C++, Fortran, Java, and many others to be very similar (this isn't a troll BTW ;-). A representative sample of some different languages would include Haskell, Icon, Mercury, Common Lisp, Objective Caml, and Forth. In my field, the domain specific languages (analogous to Excel and PL/SQL) are Verilog and VHDL, where VHDL is an Ada-like language. I use Verilog because almost all of the ASIC designers in the valley do, but they are also quite similar. > Right now, for no special reason other than personal enlightenment, and > looking at what PL/SQL might have been if Oracle had left more Ada in > it, I'm learning Ada. I'd like to have my programming staff at work > leverage their PL/SQL knowledge into Ada and build some really robust > applications but TPTB would probably hang me by my thumbs in front of > the iTek building. Seems Ada has a reputatation (around most of the auto > industry, anyway) of being a language for missle programmers and/or > anal-retentive types who spend more time arguing chapter and verse of > ARM or ARM95 than actually coding anything useful. Sorry, but that's the > image TPTB have of Ada. They'd rather throw up crap "Web applications" > quickly than build robust systems. Code quality ain't Job 1. If it were, > our "enterprise architecture" would not be 100% Microsoft, that's for > sure :-( Well, you can hack in Ada too, and IMO it is a nice language to hack in once you know it becuase of the strong typing. Better hack/debug ratio. Not all Ada fans are language lawyerly types; I've been known to say "Dude!" and curse like a sailor :-) -- Brian