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 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? References: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <20070123211651.c0d43695.tero.koskinen@iki.fi> <87zm89tpk7.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> <4q4pqgmdwo.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de> <1169719988.972296.121430@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> From: Markus E Leypold Organization: N/A Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:08:59 +0100 Message-ID: User-Agent: Some cool user agent (SCUG) Cancel-Lock: sha1:aUuX8euAL/uRh3qZw9J9paDX3qY= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.72.249.33 X-Trace: news.arcor-ip.de 1169730261 88.72.249.33 (25 Jan 2007 14:04:21 +0200) X-Complaints-To: abuse@arcor-ip.de Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!newsfeed101.telia.com!nf02.dk.telia.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-fra1.dfn.de!newsfeed.arcor-ip.de!news.arcor-ip.de!not-for-mail Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8574 Date: 2007-01-25T14:08:59+01:00 List-Id: "Harald Korneliussen" writes: > skill, experience, effort, and attention to detail than is required for > some other programming languages." So if you use C, that means you are > skilled, experienced and attentive, by some people's logic. It's a > macho thing, "If you can't handle the power, don't use it!". > > Klingon programmers if there ever were any. That, of course is a general problem in IT: Public criticism/discussion of "popular" (read hyped) paradigms or tools is hardly possible, because that seems to imply that the critic is just not able to use it ("What you can't program safely in C -- I can!"). I might go farther and note that in teams/projects criticism is often disliked: What is called a 'can-do' attitude in cheap management literature is considered to be important. ("According to my analysis, we can not write this piece of software in 2 months, since ..." -- "What, are you so incompetent? Your colleague / competitor says he can do it. So'll give it to him"). So in my opinion you only point out a sub-aspect of a quite larger problem. > It's of course a symptom of lack of professionalism: construction > workers who are proud of what they do wear their helmets. Quite right. But in computer science (esp. software engineering) the hard data is often quite missing, so the participants in these discussions replace it by belief. Whereas nobody expects a proud construction worker to wear amulets and nobody seriously suggests it, because the majority agrees that helmets protect and amulets probably not, the situation is different for development paradigms, processes and tools. And usually there is no hard data available. So even those which act wrong from your point of view can continue believing that they are doing the right thing. There is also the aspect of marketing which tends to further distort reality (or whatever goes for it in IT). Regards -- Markus