From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-08 08:47:01 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!xmission!nnrp.xmission!not-for-mail From: Thant Tessman Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died) Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 09:46:56 -0600 Organization: XMission http://www.xmission.com/ Message-ID: References: <9fa75d42.0304230424.10612b1a@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305020516.bdba239@posting.google.com> <82347202.0305021418.4719da45@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305060521.400f1d80@posting.google.com> <82347202.0305061103.2ddd98e4@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305070504.6866e7a3@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305070929.2d7a0d4c@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305080548.1afde9b7@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 166.70.98.182 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: terabinaries.xmission.com 1052408816 23947 166.70.98.182 (8 May 2003 15:46:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@xmission.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 15:46:56 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: <9fa75d42.0305080548.1afde9b7@posting.google.com> Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63310 comp.object:62992 comp.lang.ada:37069 misc.misc:14020 Date: 2003-05-08T09:46:56-06:00 List-Id: soft-eng wrote: [...] > Java perhaps repeated the pattern, by being branded as > the "language for the web". Even though the initial > claim was wrong (J2EE wasn't available at the time, > and applets never proved to be very popular), the > branding helped it gain a foothold. From there, > its good library, GC, and other features helped > it become popular. You're right about the "language for the web" marketing propaganda, but Java's good library was a product of its popularity, not the other way around. Also, there were plenty of other languages that already had GC and could have done Java's job as good if not better than Java. What Java did have was a somewhat superficial, but otherwise very deliberate resemblance to C++. Also, Netscape chose Java as the language for applet support as a way to soften their (then) image as a company that had too much weight to throw around as far as setting industry standards were concerned. I'm not qualified to defend Ada, and of course if a programming language simply doesn't work for a task it won't be used, but the notion that a language's (or OS's) popular success is primarily due to its tecnhical appropriateness is flat-out absurd. The main factor that determines the popularity of a programming language that I can detect is simply fear of the loss of capital investment--not just monetary capital, but human capital. C became popular because it was part of the payload of a virus known as Unix. C++ became popular because it was deliberately designed as an object-oriented extension of C. Java became popular because it was deliberately designed to give C and C++ programmers features (like GC) that had already been around in other languages for years. -thant