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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Why not combine Ada and C++?
Date: 15 Oct 2001 05:29:44 -0500
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In article <3105e154.0110150021.32ff5426@posting.google.com>, mengyana@legend.com (Mike Meng) writes:

> Hi, I am a proficient C++ programmer, who also admire Ada's
> reliability and power. After tasted a little Ada, I must admit that I
> like it. I alway say to my friends, though C++ is a great language,
> it's population is just because it's *C*++. If the most pop PL in
> mid-1990s was Ada, the whole life would be much easier.
> 
> But the history is history. Though I know Ada's syntax is much clearer
> and readable than C++'s, nowadays, most of programmers are familiar
> with C-family languages' syntax. Some of my friends don't like Ada
> just because it's not case-sensitive!
> 
> I'm an SCJP (Sun's Certificated Java Programmer), I clearly remember
> what the teacher said, "Java is created with C++'s syntax and
> Smalltalk's semantic". I always thought, if there is a language with
> C++ syntax and Ada95's semantic, it must be very pop!

If that were a method of making Ada more widely adopted (my presumption
of what you mean by "pop"), it would defeat certain advantages some of
us see in Ada (e.g., using clear words rather than short abbreviations).
Ada is intended to be a reader's language, rather than a writer's language,
among other reasons to facilitate maintenance 20 years later.  (I have
some code of my own that is 13 years old that I have been maintaining
this month.)

Popularity is not sufficiently important to give up strengths of the
language.