Re: Why Ada is not the Commercial Lang of Choice

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Nick Roberts said

<<> I'm sure many programmers would be irked by the more cumbersome methods
> imposed by Ada.>>

That is probably true, if by cubersome, you mean the requirement to be
clearer about what you are doing, especially if you are doing nasty low
level things.

But is this a negative or positive indication?

If programmers in general did a wonderful job with existing tools of generating
reliable applications that were on time and on budget, and easy to maintain,
then we would question changes in methods that might irk them.

But since, at least in my judgment, this is not the case, perhaps a little
irking is most appropriate.

After all, when C started to be used widely, there was an army of assembly
language programmers who were irked by the cumbersome stuff in C.

One of the advantages of Ada is that it does prove irksome to those who
insist on hacking away at an excessively low level. Some programmers
adjust, some stay irked. The latter depart, quality of code improves :-)