I guess it depends on the point of view, from my studies and views and
career, monkey see monkey do thing was quite common.  Started as "Canadians
used it cause americans used it (believe it or not) then companies used it
because other "allied" companies used it and even in some odd cases,
companies used it because "competition" used it?

P.S. I got my quote not in my signature ;-)

-- 
"To Err is human, to really screw up, you need C++!" ;-)

St�phane Richard
"Ada World" Webmaster
http://www.adaworld.com


"Marin David Condic" <nobody@noplace.com> wrote in message
news:3FAA4E46.5090206@noplace.com...
> Actually, if you look at the history of it, C got popular because it was
> given away free along with Unix at a time when people were regularly
> charging in 5 to 6 figures for a compiler. C was cheap, so it got used a
> lot. C++ got popular because it was upward compatible with C and
> provided more capabilities, so the large body of C programmers could
> transport their favorite code and all their skills to something new.
> Java got popular for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was
> that Sun spend large amounts of money marketing it. But part of the
> popularity was that it was C/C++-ish and hence all the C/C++ guys were
> staring at what they were always used to seeing.
>
> It didn't really have much to do with either inherent goodness of some
> cryptic operators nor was it strictly "monkey see - monkey do". It had a
> lot more to do with simple economics and an natural desire on the part
> of people to use what is familiar to them.
>
> In a sense, the "monkey see - monkey do" factor is also economic. I'd
> describe it more as a "Get on the bandwagon" phenomenon. Once a software
> thing crosses a certain threshold of popularity, there are economic
> advantages to using it even if it is *not* the best technology. (And
> lets face it, that is what is going to drive the choices made by
> businesses everywhere. Ada should learn that lesson well and figure out
> how to deal with it.) A larger user base means overall lower cost for
> acquisition of the technology, more plentiful and less expensive
> supporting technology, more interoperability with other tools (at less
> cost), more plentiful (and hence less expensive) technology experts,
> etc, etc, etc,. Its Supply and Demand, man! You can *never* escape it.
>
> That's why Ada can stand around arguing about how it is less expensive
> overall because of maintainability and nobody is paying much attention.
> Two or three other factors weigh in: "Yeah, *maybe* it saves some money
> down the line, but that's all guesswork & speculation and maybe it
> doesn't really save that much - but I *can* count the up-front costs and
> there Ada loses." or "I don't care about maintainability, because I
> won't be maintaining anything..." or "Maintenance is nothing to me -
> Time To Market is *everything* and Ada loses because I don't have the
> infrastructure..."
>
> These are the sort of issues that go into language selection at the
> "Macro" level (larger business users). At the "Micro" level (individual
> programmers with their home-hobbyist or work/nobody-cares types of
> needs) you have some different factors - but I dare say they won't be
> "Engineering" or "Business Analysis" factors. Much more likely: "What do
> I have available cheap or free and what is familiar to me so I won't
> have to learn a bunch of new stuff..." Understand the market and it
> helps sort out what Ada should be hoping to achieve. Something like "+="
> doesn't buy much as far as I can see.
>
> MDC
>
>
> Stephane Richard wrote:
> >
> > *** Look at a bit of history, when we say C/C++ became popular for the
wrong
> > reasons, language rich features capacities, even performances were not
even
> > considered when selecting C or C++ as the language.  Like I said
elsewhere
> > it was all based on a "monkey see monkey do" concept.  "Hey we'll use
C++
> > because this and/or that company is using it.  You call that research to
> > back up their decisions? I beg to differ.  I'm not taking anything out
of C
>
> -- 
> ======================================================================
> Marin David Condic
> I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
> My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm
>
> Send Replies To: m   o   d   c @ a   m   o   g
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>
>      "So if I understand 'The Matrix Reloaded' correctly, the Matrix is
>      basically a Microsoft operating system - it runs for a while and
>      then crashes and reboots. By design, no less. Neo is just a
>      memory leak that's too hard to fix, so they left him in... The
>      users don't complain because they're packed in slush and kept
>      sedated"
>
>          --  Marin D. Condic
> ======================================================================
>