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,a0be06fbc0dd71f1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!out04b.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in04.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in03.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!sn-xt-sjc-02!sn-xt-sjc-07!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Brian May Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: The future of Ada is at risk Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:17:26 +1100 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <20071229040639.f753f982.coolzone@it.dk> User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Am4zet6pgWmTH965BXvJyy8OFvw= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19202 Date: 2008-01-05T10:17:26+11:00 List-Id: >>>>> "Agyaras" == Agyaras writes: Agyaras> 1) Perception. Ada is still perceived as "the Pentagon language", and is Agyaras> associated in many people's minds with "evil". This perception is very Agyaras> difficult to change. I don't see this myself (with perhaps one person who liked to attack Ada for the sack of attacking Ada without understanding it); people I talk to consider Ada obsolete, not evil. Agyaras> 4) Ada limitations. Certain aspects of Ada are painfully clumsy. The Agyaras> three string libs, unnecessary multitude of I/O libs, primitive Agyaras> exception handling, constructors are not part of the language, Agyaras> finalization is an afterthought,.... A bigger issue (and a strength as well as a weakness) is that you have to write code to Ada's strict standards. Programmers feel that this is tedious, and that they loose "control". They just want to do "X" without having Ada's rules get in the way. Also, Ada is a compiled language. Many people feel this is a major limitation these days, and argue that the ability to make fast changes is absolutely vital to their project. Not that I agree with these points of views, but they you can't just discount them as stupid or ignorant either. People do consider them as big issues. Agyaras> 5) Lack of libraries and frameworks. This is due to the unpopularity of Agyaras> the language. Ada needs at least a relational DB binding *that works* Agyaras> with the current open-source RDBMS-es (as opposed to Gnade), she needs a Agyaras> good scientific library, she needs simple but powerful string handling, Agyaras> just to name a few. The catch-22 is that nobody will develop these until Agyaras> there's strong demand for Ada-based s/w, and there won't be strong Agyaras> demand until the libs are available. I take it that gnade has problems?? An issue here is that we don't really want 500 different competing DB bindings. Ideally we want one DB binding that is considered the standard set for Ada. It is easy to write a DB binding to make an individual happy, but to write one that makes the majority of the Ada community happy - that might be harder. Thick or thin? GPL or BSD? Database independent layer? etc Another issue, in order to attract people from other languages, we really need their input in creating these standards. Otherwise they will complain that our libraries are still insufficient in ways we never considered and continue with what they are use to. -- Brian May