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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-11-19 21:43:21 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!yale.edu!noc.near.net!paperboy.wellfleet.com!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!sundog.tiac.net!jdi.tiac.net!ichbiah From: ichbiah@jdi.tiac.net (Jean D. Ichbiah) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why don't large companies use Ada? Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 17:44:17 GMT Organization: JDI Technology, Inc. Message-ID: References: <3a6oc5$dkh@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3aj9a3$4am@s-cwis.unomaha.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: jdi.tiac.net X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B] Date: 1994-11-19T17:44:17+00:00 List-Id: ckrebs@s-cwis.unomaha.edu (Christopher K. Krebs) writes: >My big bitch with Ada is that it has historically bad interfaces to >commercial libraries for such things as Unix, Motif, Sybase etc. We >won't even talk about how bad Windows bindings are. So, for developement >using these types of products, Ada[...] are extremely expensive. You have a point although you should realize that this has more to do with implementations than with the language. Unfortunately, Ada vendors have had to divert too many ressources to satisfy rigid validation requirements that had little to do with what you need for the kind of applications you are mentioning: the real ones. More recently, the language revision suffered from the influence of pressure groups (such as Artwg) and this led to an overweight definition which will again tax severely vendors without - in my opinion - corresponding user benefits. On a more positive side, the object-oriented features of 9X offer some hope: see the article by Tom Quiggle - Re: SGI inheriting C++ classes - later in this conference. This may be the best chance for Ada to survive: One one hand, there is no way the Ada vendors could do the kind of investments that has been done in class frameworks developed around C++, Borland Pascal, or the forthcoming Delphi. My guess is that we are talking of several hundred of man-years and it is clearly out of question to duplicate it. (I do share your opinion about current Windows bindings and the fact that Ada development for Windows is consequently overly expensive.) But this approach of inheriting these frameworks at moderate cost, offers a chance to put Ada back into the mainstream applications. Jean D. Ichbiah