Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada?

[Jan Kroken <jankr@nntp.ifi.uio.no>]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> writes:

> So: Is the writing on the wall for Ada?

My view is that it will be a sad day when the writing is not on the
wall for every language.

In addition I don't think it works very well to sell Ada as a general
language when it has done some major sacrifices to be suitable for
real time systems.  A popular language can't have general purpose as
its second priority.

My only Ada experience is with Gnat, so my view is maybe colored by
that, but I miss several things in Ada:

1. A garbage collector

I know perfectly well that the Ada 95 standard allows for GC, but what
does that help me when the implementation doesn't have it.  The
argument against GC is that it's not desireable for realtime systems,
but I have never written a real time system in my life, so why should
I not have one? Solidarity?

2. Better organization on disk

The java idea of organizing packages in directories is really a good
idea. Same with .jar files, and the CLASSPATH.

3. OO

I know the tagged record thingie is considered OO, but that's just
playing with words. OO as a concept is more than inheritance.

4. Dynamic strings

Dynamic strings, with proper library support. It's quite possible it's
in there, but it's not coincidence that the example Ada programs I've
read all seems to impose random limits, like line lengths of input
files limited to 80 characters and such.

-- 
Jan Kroken