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=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,be23df8e7e275d73,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-08 08:37:24 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!opentransit.net!jussieu.fr!enst!enst.fr!not-for-mail From: Michael Erdmann Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us? Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:33:22 +0200 Organization: ENST, France Sender: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org Message-ID: Reply-To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.enst.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: avanie.enst.fr 994606642 6689 137.194.161.2 (8 Jul 2001 15:37:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@enst.fr NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 15:37:22 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Return-Path: X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [de] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22 i486) X-Accept-Language: en Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: comp.lang.ada mail<->news gateway List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9641 Date: 2001-07-08T17:33:22+02:00 Such question is always creating the wish in me to prove that it is not true, but my experiences with open source projects for Linux makes it more and more diffcult to prove this. If you look as the open source market which is mainly driven by the commonly available operating system (e.g Linux) you will find that C, C++ and a lot of other lagnuages are mutch more dominant then Ada. Typical for this situation is e.g. the fact that most of the Linux distributions claim to support Ada, but the compiler is in fact NOT part of the distribution. Or how many applications of a typlical Linux distribution are written in Ada? I think the answer is about 0! Any how the situation is not that devistating as it sounds, because we got GNAT and several support tools (eg. GLIDE, GVD...) to develop Ada SW for Linux. But the effect of this effort on the open source market is more or less not existing. There are still no major open source Ada applications available! I think the nagative formulation which is behind the wisenheimer question "is Ada dead" araises from such a situtation because most of the peoples asking this kinf of questions are doing this from a beginner point of view. In most cases beginners have there first contact with programing using open source systems such as Linux, where using C/C++ is considered as normal doing without reflecting about it. In order to overcome this situation, the interest of the peoples asking such questions should be attracted by interresting Ada written applications, in order to change there attitude in such a way, that they at least ask "..is Ada an alternative for my project?". The challenge for us is to gather peoples in the Ada community building such open source applications. I think good starting point for this was and is the ALT but without the "non commercial" effort of the whole Ada community, this initiative is doomed! If the Ada community fails to meet this challenge, then at least for the "open source/Linux" domain the language has to be considred in fact as dead, just because nobody needs Ada there! This does not mean, that Ada is not itensively used in other domains, but the open source and linux community will not participate from there work and such questions will araise again and again and....... Regards M.Erdmann PS: I still think Ada is the better language, but for my next open source project i considder of not using it because of all the disadvantages it has working on an isolated Ada island.