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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171333278 sender: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu references: <31daad10.57288085@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> organization: UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Department newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c Date: 1996-07-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: > > Do you suppose it would take the world by storm? > > Well, _I_ use it, but no, Clean (for that is its name), has _not_ taken > > the world by storm, and I don't expect it will. > > Never know; maybe you should write a free operating system in it. :) Some people are going to use the language anyway, there are language junkies out there. Most people though, won't give it a second glance until it becomes popular, a tough catch-22. They certainly don't want to suddenly have the language vanish and get stuck with a program that's painful to maintain (I've heard a horror story about a commonly used admin utility written in Icon, and then the programmer left and no one can maintain it but it's still in use; Icon is a nice language but if no one knows it...). Here's some important things to do to give your new fictitious language a boost: Make it free. Make it portable. This lets it get on multiple systems, so that you don't get users trapped (if it only ran on UNIX, you'd never get Windows users, and vice versa). Being free, users can modify it and make suggestions, and port it for you for free. Forget the money, people aren't going to spend a lot of money even on proven languages. Eiffel is a wonderful language from what I've seen, but I don't want to buy it and I've never seen a system where it was installed. Have it generate C code as the backend. Don't bother with native code generation until it's caught on. This makes your language much more portable, and you can leverage off of the large C community and C optimizers. If you really want native generation, at least allow the C code as an option (thus, you don't become obsolete when the customer moves to a different machine, and the customer's code can still be used). Make sure your giant runtime system is justified. If you can't easily build standalone applications, you chop out a big chunk of the market. Your customers shouldn't have to require that their customers have your runtime system. Don't fall in love with your language. Be prepared to take criticism, and to actually make use of it. Be prepared to abandon your principles. Your customers won't care at all that you upheld your principles, but they will care that won't make a change they consider vital. In short, figure out why existing languages got popular before they had critical mass, and try to use the same concepts when you can. -- Darin Johnson djohnson@ucsd.edu O- Support your right to own gnus.