RE: Anybody in US using ADA ? New language competition?

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

Marin Condic stated, " If Ada wants to win, its got to get out in front and
lead the way with more/better leverage *today* rather than "One Day".
This is totally correct. Our chance is with XML, which has a greater
similarity with Ada than other programming languages. We need an XForms
implementation that works and can exchange data with Ada.
Bob Leif 
-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]
On Behalf Of Marin David Condic
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 6:47 PM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Anybody in US using ADA ? New language competition?

Well, Ada's original requirements were targeted towards the embedded world
and for a whole bunch of reasons, it went over like a lead balloon with the
embedded developers. Partly because it initially didn't satisfy those
requirements in practice. (Eventually, it got there but not after having
created a horrible first impression and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of
too many embedded developers.)

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with the language and there
isn't anything inherently wrong with its original requirements. However, if
I was going to write a new set of requirements for Ada (or some new
language) to meet, I'd spend some time talking to the folks who are not
using Ada now and find out what they want most in a programming language.
I'd bet (given the history of what is being bought out there) that
development leverage would tip the scales in its favor. "Hey guys! Pay that
initial investment in learning curve and infrastructure development up front
and you'll be building apps in half the time you do now and oh, P.S.,
they'll be portable across Windoze, Unix, Linux and Mac too!!!"

Reliability, performance, maintainability are all wonderful and desirable
things - but first you've got to deliver! Ada's problem is that it has a
history of promising how great its going to be one day, but doesn't
deliver - at least not on time. By this, I mean that it has promised things
like being good for embedded development and then taking years to get
efficient enough to do it and not being targeted to nearly enough embedded
platforms. People went with C because Ada just talked about how great it
would be one day. Same story now for workstation/PC development. One day, if
enough bindings and libraries are built you could develop better GUI apps
that are more reliable. But so what? C++ and/or Java are already there with
their libraries and bindings. Too bad that "One Day" Ada could do it better.
People are picking their languages and platforms today - not "One Day". If
Ada wants to win, its got to get out in front and lead the way with
more/better leverage *today* rather than "One Day".

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote in message
news:3E148004.5000408@cogeco.ca...
>
> It would be interesting reading to review the "competition to
> the Green language" at this point in time, to see how the
> other entries stack up with what we know and accept today in
> compiler languages and technologies. Are there online documents
> that describe the other entries?
>
> The Internet today would make it very easy for us to form our
> own committee of "language experts" to start a language design
> competition and review. Once the winner is announced, there must
> be enough open sourced people spoiling for a chance to work on
> a new language/compiler.  Getting it accepted by industry would
> be a different matter, but hey -- Linux is gaining acceptance.
> Stranger things have happened.
>
> However, when I think about it myself, I just feel that Ada95 (and
> pending 200y) has gained so much useful experience, that it seems
> a shame to start over (and add to the competition with Ada). I'd
> rather see Ada succeed than start from near scratch again. But hey-
> maybe there is a better design waiting to be sprung on the world.
>
> --
> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
> http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg
>