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 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.224.126.137 with SMTP id c9mr8715964qas.2.1379885064452; Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:24:24 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.49.48.38 with SMTP id i6mr755576qen.4.1379885064436; Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:24:24 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!d5no1465143qap.0!news-out.google.com!gv3ni1143qab.0!nntp.google.com!d5no1532903qap.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:24:24 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <2f813569-5ff8-4c20-a5ab-8538e6514906@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=174.28.152.201; posting-account=lJ3JNwoAAAAQfH3VV9vttJLkThaxtTfC NNTP-Posting-Host: 174.28.152.201 References: <2f813569-5ff8-4c20-a5ab-8538e6514906@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Anti-Ada FUD (rant) From: Shark8 Injection-Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 21:24:24 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:17223 Date: 2013-09-22T14:24:24-07:00 List-Id: On Friday, September 20, 2013 4:18:29 PM UTC-6, krfk...@gmail.com wrote: > Sigh, >=20 > 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 no= thing exists besides C, Perl/Python, and Linux, and that there is no market= besides pandering to neckbeards. This kind of attitude is exemplified nowh= ere "better" than the jargon file. For example, read the page on Ada! >=20 >=20 >=20 > http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/Ada.html >=20 >=20 >=20 > >=20 > Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precis= ely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed = by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-b= illion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"= ). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication fe= atures particularly hilarious. >=20 > =20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > In the first sentence (before the quote), it mentions that Ada was made m= andatory by the DoD. As if having a standard for extremely mission critical= things (like, oh, I dunno, national security) is somehow a bad thing? Anyw= ay, 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 cra= cker), but I still think it's a stupid statement. Oh, a language was rigoro= usly developed by a team of experts and professionals to fit a very specifi= c 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 wo= rd fiat means?=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > 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, an= d chose a language that we know as Ada from among them. But regardless, wha= t exactly is *wrong* with so-called design by committee, besides its morphi= ng 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, i= ndividuals can also lack man power, experience, sufficiently wide knowledge= and aptitude, and ability to see beyond one's own mistakes and eccentricit= ies.=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > Difficult to use is entirely a matter of opinion. Is C or C++ *easy* to u= se?? Besides that even, judging a language by the standards of another is a= bsurdly unfair. I wouldn't say, I dunno, 68000 assembly code is particularl= y 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 langua= ges. The primary goal of Ada is to prevent the kinds of bugs and security i= ssues that plague code of other languages, like C. I have to ask myself a l= ot, why, in 2013, something as moronic as buffer overflows are still a prob= lem. 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 co= de that isn't riddled with bugs and security holes.=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > 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 standa= rds of what constitutes good, therefore it isn't." >=20 >=20 >=20 > The part about exception handling and IPC is particularly baffling. How e= xactly is it hilarious? Right, because C is so great in that regard right? >=20 >=20 >=20 > All in all, I'm just so sick of the smarmy types of people who call thems= elves 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 scho= ol. There's a portion of a rant in the Unix-Hater's Handbook which claims t= hat 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 dea= ls with real-money I would find against any company that had PHP in their s= oftware-stack were I on the jury of a civil [or criminal] case simply due t= o how fast-and-loose it plays with the conversions. (And C/C++, while an or= der of magnitude better, is still unacceptable IMO.) All that said, it would be nice if I could articulate an excellent counter-= argument.