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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,38159b1b5557a2e7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-01-21 10:29:05 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!proxad.net!proxad.net!194.168.222.61.MISMATCH!newspeer1-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!newsfep4-winn.server.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: chris User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031205 Thunderbird/0.4 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: why ada is so unpopular ? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:31:58 +0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 81.107.63.68 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ntlworld.com X-Trace: newsfep4-winn.server.ntli.net 1074709743 81.107.63.68 (Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:29:03 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:29:03 GMT Organization: ntl Cablemodem News Service Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4611 Date: 2004-01-21T18:31:58+00:00 List-Id: 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