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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Stu Hollander Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: New IEEE Language Popularity Ratings Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 06:08:54 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <31c22983-150c-4dab-abba-588e15f75914@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: hibdwzayS0qDUtK+ZSTOaQ.user.gioia.aioe.org X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:31345 Date: 2016-08-10T06:08:54+00:00 List-Id: On 2016-08-09, Norman Worth wrote: > On 7/28/2016 9:05 AM, Alejandro R. Mosteo wrote: >> On 28/07/16 16:58, brbarkstrom@gmail.com wrote: >>> has a 2016 ranking of languages. Top two are C, followed by Java. That's because the two of the three most popular "operating systems" are written in C and top one uses mostly Java. > When I mention doing something in Ada, my very experienced peers > shudder. They have never been trained in the language, and they dread > it. Their perception is that Ada is a very large, extremely difficult > language with an impossible learning curve. And C++ isn't? >They also feel it would be difficult to read, understand, and maintain. And C++ isn't? It's really quite the opposite. C is an unsafe language, C++ is unreadable, error-prone and builds on C's worst attributes. Ada is readable, safe, and maintainable and was designed (as opposed to C and C++!) from the beginning to deal with large systems. It's unfortunate and we all realize it's going to stay that way but people really missed out and continue to miss out by not looking into Ada and other alternatives. They prefer to stay with the broken tools they already think they know. The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know. In reality the situation is quite the opposite of what most people imagine. C++ is enormous and complicated. I don't believe anybody knows it all. Those people are afraid of Ada? They're the ones who would probably benefit from it and enjoy the refreshing change the most. As you said the tools are not there. That is enough to kick Ada out the door no matter how good the language is. If C and C++ had no libraries they'd also be unusable... > The battle reminds me a bit of the Algol vs. FORTRAN battles in the > 1970s. I don't remember that because outside of academia nobody cared about ALGOL and we all there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell FORTRAN was going to be displaced. To some degree FORTRAN and Fortran are still hanging on. Not that ALGOL wasn't an interesting language but it fell off the radar 40 years ago and there hasn't been a sighting since. Stu