Re: advantages or disadvantages of ADA over pascal or modula

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

Absolutely! Yeah, verrily! And Amen!

Engineers tend to think that the object of the game is to use really
advanced tools to build really cool stuff. Bzzzzzttt! Wrong Answer! The
object of the game is to MAKE MONEY and the sooner Ada can start showing
people how it MAKES MONEY, the sooner it will start finding acceptance
against all of the objections of the anti-Ada software developers that don't
want to use it. If the industry that manufactures blivets uses predominantly
C and someone starts a business to make blivets and uses Ada and starts
coming out with better, less expensive blivets that show up earlier to
market, you'll see Ada catch on in the blivet industry like wildfire.

Unfortunately, I suspect that Ada would be only one small factor in
improving the overall performance of most industries. Hence, the management
view of "A language is a language is a language..." Other factors can easily
outweigh whatever advantages Ada has over its competitors. That's why I
think its important for Ada to evolve a whole toolset to improve
productivity for some segment of the commercial world - to add more leverage
than the language alone can produce.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:DFEB74B72ECC1424.38F3492A4FC37FE2.7686CDC7A4899242@lp.airnews.net...
>
> You have to learn their language.
>
> Let me give you an example.  A whole bunch of companies spent a lot of
money
> on Expert Systems work in the 1980s because of a couple of huge success
> stories.  Digital Equipment Corporation did the VAX configurator, that
saved
> them a huge boatload of money.  BBN did a geology expert system that found
 a
> monster ore deposit that humans had overlooked.  When you show a
beancounter
> that you can make him REAL MONEY using technology, he'll listen.
>
>
>