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From: Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Why is Ada considered "too specialized" for scientific use
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:18:18 +0000
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Date: 2010-04-14T19:18:18+00:00
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On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Charles H. Sampson wrote:

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> wrote:                     |
|                                                                            |
|> On Sun, 4 Apr 2010, Andrea Taverna suggested:                             |
|>                                                                           |
|> |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|> |----- "On 4 Apr, 06:46, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:       |
|> | <rant>                                                                  |
|> | The only true reason for which Ada or other languages aren't used is, as|
|> | you said, the amount of available software directly usable in those     |
|> | languages, which depends on the popularity of the language itself,      |
|> | which, in turn, depends on the ease with which the language can be      |
|> | implemented in popular architectures (x86 PC). This more or less dates  |
|> | back to Unix and C being the ultimate computer viruses (cfr. "The Unix  |
|> | Haters Handbook") ... </rant>"                                          |
|> |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|> |-----                                                                    |
|>                                                                           |
|> No. Someone who works predominantly as something else (such as a          |
|> physicist) lacks the confidence; time; motivation; background;            |
|> understanding; and skills to waste time learning another language. It     |
|> would be better that the one language which an incidental programmer did  |
|> not become completely scared of was Ada, but few incidental programmers   |
|> would be taught such a good language to begin with, and few incidental    |
|> programmers will try a second language.                                   |
|                                                                            |
|     I agree with the point of your response but not your choice of         |
|words.  Most of us here would not use the phrase "waste time to learn       |
|another language [Ada]."  :-)"                                              |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Okay, to put it another way: a computer scientist would not waste time
learning another language. Someone who is never going to be good at
programming because it is a marginal issue for THAT person does not
have enough of a reason to try to learn another language. For example,
I use a pen and a keyboard and I do not do much fancy writing so I
have enough of a reason to learn how to be a calligrapher. I do not
give many speeches, so I have not taken lessons on oration. A
politician might substantially benefit from lessons on oration, and
though might find a better language in Ada, would not really need to
be much of a software developer. I strained to listen to Tullio
Vardanega trying to speak when he was giving a presentation at a
conference. It would be good for him to take lessons on oration: but
if he had to choose between learning to be audible or defining
RAVENSCAR, which would you have preferred him to do?