Re: why ada is so unpopular ?

[chris <spamoff.danx@ntlworld.com>]

Luke A. Guest wrote:
> 
> Well, I wouldn't say that Ada is unpopular. There are other factors to
> take into consideration:
> 
> 1) Management don't know about Ada.

If they knew, would they care?  In the desktop, I don't think so. 
Ludovic is right in the disposability of programmers.  Especially today.

Do you know how many software developers are out in just the UK there 
looking for jobs (like me)?  Loads!  The more experienced SEs might even 
have to take a pay drop (in terms of what they're worth) just to get a 
job.  There is not as much money as there used to be out there and 
people aren't going to take risks moving over to other technologies if 
the technologies they have do the job and there's a steady stream of 
programmers conversant in those technologies available.  Unis teach 
graduates the hot technology and the cycle repeats!


> 2) Management tend to want the programmers to use languages that are the
> current fad, i.e. C/C++.
> 3) I had to learn Ada at uni and I had no idea about before then. I
> actually love the language, It has so many features not found anywhere
> else that are (IMO) necessary for development.

I used to think so, but have found similar features in other languages 
expressed more powerfully and also with the benefit of run time 
portability and lots of tools targetting the desktop developer.  Ocaml 
for instance library support on the desktop exceeds Ada's with the 
exception of GUI toolkits (there are only a couple of these), despite 
being a functionally imperative language from the research community (or 
maybe it doesn't, but appears so since there is a central repository 
full of current links & sw).

I think the perception from uni is that Ada is a good language, but why 
spend time making data structure libraries or downloading them when C++, 
C#, Delphi (iirc) and Java have them out of the box.  Data structures 
will be remedied but what about XML?  It has no place in the standard 
but what if compilers came with an XML parser, a gui toolkit and 
whatever else need be.  Note it doesn't take ACT (specifically) to do 
this.  Someone could package it up for people and let them download it. 
  Some Ada compiler companies might do this already but are they expensive?


> I think that if enough programmers get to know Ada, I think that better
> programming standards will emerge, but it's up to those who know it
> and those who can tell others about it to spread the word and make sure
> that others start to use it.

It's a nice language yes, but it's one of *many* such languages.


Chris