Re: is ada dead?

[Michal Nowak <vinnie@inetia.pl>]

On 01-07-07, at 17:37, Andrzej Lewandowski  wrote:

>to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was
>smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C.

Why you made step backward? I'm switching now from C++ to Ada and I do not
regret it. I will not list here benefits of using Ada - it would make this
post very long, besides everybody here knows them. I still have to do projects
for my studies in C++/Java, but after learning Ada error rate decreased,
programs are more readable. Magic?

>This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada
>programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL.

I search if there are job opportunities in Ada, before I decided to learn it
- I would be waste of time for learning language which is not used and becoming
extinct. I wanted two find them, because Ada is so good language. And I found
them. Lots of jobs in Ada - big pity none in my country, but world is so small :)
It's true, that there is more offers for C++/Java (what is VB - very basic?)
programmers, but Ada projects are much more interesting. Companies use C++/Java/
Visual Basic, because coding time is a bit faster than in Ada - they faster see
program alive, but...Look, how many bugs are in software. New version of software
are produced one after another, just to fix bugs. But the worse thing is that,
software buyers accepct bugs. What you do if you buy bad-working washing mashine?
Return it back. And software? My idea is to produce good, reliable software.
I don't claim that C++/Java programs must be unreliable. I see that writing
reliable software in Ada is much more easier.

>What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost
>of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say,
>Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure
>of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop
>one zero from their price list.

Can be true, can be false. Program lifecycle is not only coding. There is also
maintnace, new versions developent. These phases are less money-consuming in
Ada than in other mentioned languages. One important thing - you buy compiler
one time and use it for long period. It is used for writting many programs.
So I think, that good compiler is worthy investing.

-Mike

------------------------
Mike Nowak
mailto: vinnie@inetia.pl