Re: Why is Ada NOT a good choice for a beginner to programming?

[Craig Carey <research@ijs.co.nz>]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 09:29:17 -0500, Wes Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote:
...
>> with Win'98, I would play with the supplied (I think) QBasic
>> to get a feel for programming.
>
>He professes to be a beginner, and yet he has enough
>insight to see that C, C++, and Java invite "buggy
>frustration"  :-)
>
>Actually, as much as I detest the unjustified hype
>surrounding Java, it might be considered a good
>_compromise_ between C/C++ and

In all my time browsing around valueless Java websites, I never saw
the point made that companies and developers who use Java, get
complaints about Java, and an very interesting thing about the
complaints is how every user can spot the fact that Java is worse.

Some open source projects use Java because they want the top programmer
to learn it. That faulty thinking can go sour when it turns out that
the software does not run excellently, and the end users want to
criticise Java and it is worse. Instead of bug reports the first
program is close to never being used again. Criticisms of the decision
to use Java tend to appear. Problems with Java can be serious.

I had a problem my self in December 2002: previously I could browse
to the download page and copy the URL off a console window running a
proxy, and then enter that URL into Fastget. But Sun Microsystems has
shut that down and a webbrowser really has to be used. Presumably
persons in the jungles of Asia would still have to use a webbrowser
after bloats up to be 98MB in size or whatever. It is complaints
from Asia and China and all around the world that help make Java
programmers and Java project leaders (and certainly not university
staff who are kept excluded) as unable to defend Sun as we currently
believe them to be.

I see that in the MS trial, a Gosling (?) memo was produced and it
said that Java had instability. Instability seems to described a
far advanced hard to reverse state of averaging evidence of bugs.
Sun Microsystems maybe is a leader in bug concealment. I presume the
first prime technique is to make it look like the end programmers
are at fault.

I am waiting for the day that Sun hits bankruptcy (e.g. forces by
some anti-trust split up) and a judge requires they start imposing
royalty fees on companies like IBM. 


Craig Carey
http://www.ijs.co.nz/ada_95.htm