Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications

[Ken Plotkin <kplotkin@nospam-cox.net>]

On 22 May 2006 00:36:11 -0700, lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl) wrote:

>I'm not sure that technical reasons are involved in the actual
>decision making. BTW, cross-posting a question like this often
>results in poor discussion.

I think you're correct about that.  ADA was very political.

As I recall, ADA was designed by the US DOD for use in embedded
systems.  It came at a time when Pascal-like languages were in vogue.
Its structured nature and verbosity were intended to improve
readibility, maintenance and reliability.

I once needed an algorithm for radar processing.  I received it in the
form of a snippet of ADA source code.  If that snippet was
representative, it certainly achieved the readibility goal.

DOD put one major restriction that IMHO hurt ADA's acceptance.  That
was that there were to be no subsets.  To be called ADA it had to be a
full implementation.  I believe it also had to pass quality control.
Compilers were expensive.  In the 80s, when PCs were really catching
on, an ADA compiler for a PC cost several thousand dollars, vs a few
hundred for a Fortran compiler.  I always figured the all-or-nothing
and testing requirements caused that.

Ken Plotkin