Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada?

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

The problem with comparing Ada to other languages and saying "If only we 
change the syntax to look more like other languages, Ada would be more 
popular..." is that you're playing the "Me too!!!" game. I don't think 
that is the way to success because you're letting your competition 
define the whole game.

One can argue endlessly about the relative value of this or that 
syntactic feature, but think about it this way: If you change Ada syntax 
enough to make it look like the "more popular girl" (Java) then it just 
becomes indistinguishable from the more popular girl - except it doesn't 
have her name. For the folks who love Java, Ada can never be enough like 
Java and attempting to make it so will only thwart more productive 
efforts. I think Ada just has to say "What do *I* want to be good at?" 
and concentrate on being the best addresser of that particular market.

If the market is "Embedded/Realtime" then it will take a lot more than 
language features to get there. Ada already has the best collection of 
embedded/realtime language features of any language in widespread use 
and has an almost nonexistant presence in this field. If Ada wants to 
get introspective about what might make her better for this market, I'd 
think she would have to concentrate on stuff external to the language 
proper - like libraries and development tools.

MDC

Jared wrote:
> 
> Want Ada to be more popular?  Write an alternate syntax.  Play up objects.  
> Make them the focus.  Read up on the pi calculus, and compare with 
> protected types and streams.  Above all, if something doesn't need to be 
> said more than once, it shouldn't be.


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Marin David Condic
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