Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Jim Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3C58AE09.7070503@worldnet.att.net...
>
> article I find one assumption is that people know Ad as
> well as C, and have made a conscious decision toward C and
> away from Ada. I do not believe this assumption is even
> approximately true.
>
Some part of the decision may be subconscious - many people just use what
they know or what has gone before or what came with their development board.
Others may have given Ada passing consideration, having heard rumors about
it, etc. and at least consciously said "I don't want to use Ada because..."
Still others may have given serious evaluation to Ada and even considered it
to be superior in many respects, but abandoned it because they just couldn't
get it for the platforms for which they were developing. (Remember, this was
about embedded systems in particular. This makes the picture significantly
different from workstation/PC development.)


>
> My contention is that Ada has never slid into oblivion.
> In fact, Ada is slowly climbing out of the initial
> oblivion into which it was born.
>
It may be climbing out of oblivion - but probably more in the Workstation/PC
application world than in the embedded world. I suspect the numbers cited in
the article are pretty close to reality for embedded systems. Maybe its
really 4% instead of 2% of embedded development going on in Ada. Maybe the
2% consists of really big important projects and the 98% are much smaller
software efforts. We could dispute the exact precision of the numbers all
day long, but I don't think anyone will contend that it is really more like
25%. Ada is just a small sliver of the embedded market and almost
nonexistant outside of DoD embedded work. (Depending, of course, on how you
want to count it.)

It would help Ada in the embedded world if there were more SBCs available
with at least Ada as an option for compiler choice. If, for example, the SBC
were to come with the gcc/Gnat compiler built so that developers could
choose to use C, C++ or Ada & still have access to all the development
tools, it might stand a chance. But look at what ships with most SBC
development kits: Some version of C or maybe C++. Never mind that if someone
*really* wanted to use Ada, they could cobble together a kit for themselves
out of parts available from the Internet. The mission of embedded computing
isn't to use some specific language - its to ship a working product out the
door. Spending weeks or months getting a development environment together
when one already comes with the kit is a waste of the stockholder's money.

Its not impossible for Ada to get used for embedded development - but it
sure needs first and formost to be *available* as a choice. Then it needs to
overcome all the usual objections, but at least it can play in the market.
It wouldn't hurt if there was some easily assembled student-level
development kit. That way, Ada would be targeting the developers who don't
already have built in biases and who will soon be making decisions about
what to use on "real" projects.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/