Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant)

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Friday, September 20, 2013 4:18:29 PM UTC-6, krfk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Sigh,
> 
> I'm sure this is old hat you guys, but I need to get this off my chest. I'm so sick of the smug ignorance of myopia of self-styled "hackers" that nothing exists besides C, Perl/Python, and Linux, and that there is no market besides pandering to neckbeards. This kind of attitude is exemplified nowhere "better" than the jargon file. For example, read the page on Ada!
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/Ada.html
> 
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious.
> 
> </snip> 
> 
> 
> 
> In the first sentence (before the quote), it mentions that Ada was made mandatory by the DoD. As if having a standard for extremely mission critical things (like, oh, I dunno, national security) is somehow a bad thing? Anyway, continuing on, we learn that "hackers" dislike Ada. What the hell is a "hacker," and more to the point, why should I care what the hell they think? And yes, I realize it means "hacker" in the good sense (as opposed to cracker), but I still think it's a stupid statement. Oh, a language was rigorously developed by a team of experts and professionals to fit a very specific need with a particularly large level of security and predictability? Yeah, well, some cheetos-dust covered "hacker" behind a computer screen thinks it sucks so whatever. What on earth is endorsement by fiat even supposed to me? Is there any other kind of fiat? Does the author even know what the word fiat means? 
> 
> 
> 
> I take issue with the claim that Ada was "designed by committee," because it wasn't. Several groups put in bids for what the DoD was looking for, and chose a language that we know as Ada from among them. But regardless, what exactly is *wrong* with so-called design by committee, besides its morphing into a snarl word? I see this used all the time, sometimes even when it makes no sense, without any explanation as to why it is bad. And yes, while I agree that committees can lack vision, so can individuals. Conversely, individuals can also lack man power, experience, sufficiently wide knowledge and aptitude, and ability to see beyond one's own mistakes and eccentricities. 
> 
> 
> 
> Difficult to use is entirely a matter of opinion. Is C or C++ *easy* to use?? Besides that even, judging a language by the standards of another is absurdly unfair. I wouldn't say, I dunno, 68000 assembly code is particularly easy (though it is rather nice as assembly goes) but that doesn't mean it sucks. It serves an entirely different purpose than does high level languages. The primary goal of Ada is to prevent the kinds of bugs and security issues that plague code of other languages, like C. I have to ask myself a lot, why, in 2013, something as moronic as buffer overflows are still a problem. And yes, proper typing systems take just a little bit longer to type. I'm sorry it's such a burden to you to have to take precautions to write code that isn't riddled with bugs and security holes. 
> 
> 
> 
> Disastrous? By what metric? The DoD seems to be doing fine. Ever taken an airplane flight and not crashed? Well, Ada seems to be doing well there as well! Again, the arrogance is stunning. "This thing doesn't meet my standards of what constitutes good, therefore it isn't."
> 
> 
> 
> The part about exception handling and IPC is particularly baffling. How exactly is it hilarious? Right, because C is so great in that regard right?
> 
> 
> 
> All in all, I'm just so sick of the smarmy types of people who call themselves hackers.

I can totally understand that.

> I've seen them attack everything that isn't C and UNIX.

Tell me about it; that's one of the biggest turn-offs I encountered in school. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims that Unix had stunted development/advancement in OSes and with that attitude I encountered I don't doubt it (or that the same is [mostly] true of C/C++).

> It just gets under my skin that people are so oblivious to the fact that not all programming is serving up web pages or video games.

Even if something *is* web-based there's no excuse for as poor programming/implementation as I've encountered [here's looking at you PHP] -- if it deals with real-money I would find against any company that had PHP in their software-stack were I on the jury of a civil [or criminal] case simply due to how fast-and-loose it plays with the conversions. (And C/C++, while an order of magnitude better, is still unacceptable IMO.)

All that said, it would be nice if I could articulate an excellent counter-argument.