Re: Ada noob here! Is Ada widely used?

[Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>]

Ludovic Brenta expounded in news:87d3wqbayp.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org:

> Duke Normandin writes:
>> On 2010-05-20, Anonymous <cripto@ecn.org> wrote:
>>>> Just curious to know if Ada is still widely used, and in what
>>>> area(s) does it excel, e.g. data processing, number crunching,
>>>> graphics, etc? TIA..

It's ok to be curious but this begs the question of why 
it is important for it to be "popular"?

Do you have to sell it's use at your company?

Are you considering the availability of tools and/or 
source code?

Or, are you interested in it for your own (or open sourced)
projects?

Depending on the answers to some of these factors, 
popularity may not be important. 

IOW, if you need an excellent tool, then embrace Ada. Let 
the compiler work for you, instead of some other allowing 
more "shooting in the foot". Or real time "scripts" finding
your problems one at a time when the user goes to use it.

That reminds me of a low-calibre programmer and VB -- oh
the horror of that...

>>> Ada was never widely used. It could have been, because it's one of
>>> the all time great general purpose languages. There's probably no
>>> better or more flexible HLL. However, various factors combined to
>>> make it a niche language and it doesn't have any hope of breaking
>>> out of that niche or getting the use and exposure it deserves.

While probably true, there is always hope. The future
is murkey at best. With more and more software moving
into automobiles etc., safety's profile might push this
agenda a little bit.

> - people who spend the effort to learn Ada show they are real software
>   engineers.  A real software enginer bases their decisions on
>   technical merits, not popularity.

My point above, in a nutshell.

> - Sloppy programmers avoid Ada, therefore Ada helps avoid sloppy
>   programmers.

They're more lazy than I am. ;-)

Warren