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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Thread: 1094ba,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid1094ba,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!p01!dukeread07.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: Ken Plotkin Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications Organization: Guybrush Threepwood Fan Club Message-ID: References: <447169eb$1@news.meer.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 17:25:08 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.100.147.245 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: dukeread07 1148333109 68.100.147.245 (Mon, 22 May 2006 17:25:09 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 17:25:09 EDT Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4349 comp.lang.fortran:10093 Date: 2006-05-22T17:25:08-04:00 List-Id: 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