Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?

["Jeffrey R. Carter" <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Charles D Hixson wrote:
> 
> As shown by the silly mistake that I made in C, it's not my favorite 
> language.  But when I compare a book on expert systems written in C and 
> one written in Ada (well, Ada83), the book in Ada is both thicker and 
> has more pages devoted to code than the book in C, and the expert 
> systems are approximately of equivalent power (i.e., toy systems).   
> Well, the type size is a trifle larger, and the paper a bit thicker...so 
> the comparison isn't quite as straightforward as I'm making it out, but 
> basically Ada83 appears to take approx 1.5 times as many lines to do the 
> same thing.  (I didn't count the lines. It's a rough estimate.  Say 
> somewhere between 1.1 and 1.9 times as many lines.)  Possibly this is a 
> comment on the skills of the authors, but the number of extensive 
> comparisons I've encountered is very limited.  (Or maybe it's a comment 
> on Ada83, and doesn't apply to Ada95.)

That's a good thing. Ada emphasizes ease of reading over ease of 
writing, since code is read far more often than it is written. C's 
emphasis is the opposite.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"All citizens will be required to change their underwear
every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside,
so we can check."
Bananas
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