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,FREEMAIL_FROM, LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,54889de51045a215 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-21 23:56:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: += in ada Date: 21 Oct 2003 23:56:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <1066311805.222491@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F8F3077.60402@comcast.net> <3F900F35.50203@comcast.net> <3F952A59.5090001@noplace.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.194.87.148 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1066805777 21551 127.0.0.1 (22 Oct 2003 06:56:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 06:56:17 +0000 (UTC) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1371 Date: 2003-10-21T23:56:17-07:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote in message news:<3F952A59.5090001@noplace.com>... > That and various bad management decisions on the part of the powers that > be who were trying to create/promote Ada, and you had a pretty horrible Naw ... I don't believe it! > reputation right out of the starting gate. This reputation spread like > wildfire and has been *enormously* hard to overcome. Some of it is > reality and some of it is myth, but in the world of "Marketing" - > "Perception *IS* Reality". > > Hence - back on subject - I see no reason to believe that adding trivial > syntax changes is going to in any way win over the crowd that hated Ada > for a hell of a lot bigger things than lack of a "+=" operator. That's all very interesting, but the fact is that Ada was mandated by the DoD for much more than just embedded systems. My understanding is that it was mandated for pretty much everything, right down to personnel management and payroll systems. So here you had a $300,000,000,000/year behemoth driving the adoption of a particular programming language like nothing we've ever seen before or since -- and never will, for that matter. That in itself blows all the excuses out of the water as far as I am concerned. Think about it. If the DoD spent only 1% of its budget on software, that was approximately $3,000,000,000/year going directly to Ada development. And I'll bet they spend *much* more than 1%. You know I agree that Ada is a fundamentally sound language. If it's half as good as we think it is, and if it is so much more productive than C and C++, why aren't the masses who were forced to use it now singing its praises? Something else is going on here, and I think most of you here are blind to that reality. You can ridicule me all you want about ":=" and "+=", but I think the last laugh will be on you when the reality of Ada's demise finally hits you.