Re: Re-Marketing Ada (was "With and use")

[18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ)]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote in message news:<JtPsb.8014$fB3.463946@news20.bellglobal.com>...

> I think most of us would agree that Ada was ahead of its time
> when it came out. By 1995, I believe the "market" had probably
> already accepted C/C++ as the dominant language, largely due to
> its widespread use in operating systems (UNIX + NT), and major
> applications. Even in 1995 (including up to present) the kind of
> thing you hear now is "I remember Ada". Immediatly the association
> is that it is "old", even though C is just as old (younger folks
> often havn't even heard of it, unless the University taught it).

My experience is that many if not most software professionals have no
idea what Ada 95 can actually do. They don't know, for example, that
it has built-in multitasking and support for distributed systems. Many
of them don't even know it is object oriented. Part of this is due to
the fact that Ada 83 was considerably less evolved, and, as you point
out, it was well along in its decline before Ada 95 came out. I guess
most programmers consider Ada to be roughly in the category of
Fortran, both in capability and popularity.

How do we get the word out about Ada? I don't know, but do I know that
Ada is not the only superior technology that is being squandered due
to ignorance. Nuclear power is another classic example of a superior
technology that is being squandered due to abysmal ignorance. If you
have some spare time, go to my web pages on it at
http://RussP.org/nucpower.htm , then click on "Some Amazing Facts
about Nuclear Power". I bet you'll be surprised at what you discover.
(OK, that ends my off-topic rant.)