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: 103376,21960280f1d61e84 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!d625b1a5!not-for-mail From: Arthur Evans Jr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? References: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> Posted-And-Mailed: yes User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.4 (PPC Mac OS X) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:24:21 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.17.176.199 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net 1169562261 70.17.176.199 (Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:24:21 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:24:21 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8423 Date: 2007-01-23T14:24:21+00:00 List-Id: In article , wrote: > Ada suffered, in its early days, from a convergence of several > things. Richard Riehle wrote eloquently on this subject. I'll add one more point. Ada came out at a time when the government in general and the defense Department in particular were widely perceived as evil. Since Ada was intended to be used to write programs that would kill people, some perceived it as inherently evil. Many folks, myself included, made the argument that wrenches are used to build weapons; should we ban wrenches? Those who had already made up their minds couldn't or wouldn't hear that argument. This argument alone wasn't a major desideratum in Ada's failure to become more popular, but then neither was any one of Richard's arguments. All of these arguments taken together, though, were too much at the critical time when Ada might have succeeded as intended. Too bad. Art Evans