Re: Decline?

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

"Thomas" <thomas@kenshi.dk> wrote in message 
news:47d7de50$0$89175$157c6196@dreader1.cybercity.dk...
> Today I stumbled on this fairly old (2003) paper on the merits (or lack of!) 
> of Ada.
>
> http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/03.reports/pdf/03tn021.pdf
>
Any paper that relies so heavily on input from Reifer is, in my opinon, suspect.
He is a turncoat, once an AJPO Director and pretender to be an advocate
of Ada who, upon leaving his position in AJPO, turned on the entire Ada
intiative and began deprectating it.  People who knew of his former AJPO
role took his ill-considered advice and this did as much to damage the
progress of Ada and its acceptability as anyone.   I have stopped
placing credence in anything he writes.

The paper is a few years old.   New initiatives have been on-going.  Note that
it continues to compliment Ada on its being a more effective alternative than
other languages.   Ada is still a superior technology over C++, Java, and
most other languages.   It is not popular for a lot of reasons, some of which
go back to the inflexibility of the Ada 83 model.   With Ada 95 and Ada2005,
it surpasses, as a language, those alternatives.

The place where Ada needs improvement is, more and improved libraries
to support continuing ideas in software development (not a need for language
improvement), better community awareness of its benefits, and a more
effective campaign to present its successes.

Richard Riehle