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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,42490cad53ee37fa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:42:42 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.12.40 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net 1110807762 209.165.12.40 (Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:42:42 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:42:42 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9360 Date: 2005-03-14T13:42:42+00:00 List-Id: 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. -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "'Shut up,' he explained." -- Ring Lardner ======================================================================