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!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!newscon04.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.net!newsdst01.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr13.news.prodigy.net.POSTED!cfe18fef!not-for-mail From: Gary Scott Organization: Home User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: The future of Ada is at risk References: <20071229040639.f753f982.coolzone@it.dk> <13oe680qard6u2d@corp.supernews.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.94.27.98 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr13.news.prodigy.net 1200077470 ST000 68.94.27.98 (Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:51:10 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:51:10 EST X-UserInfo1: SCSYASZETRRACPD[MZHLN\TDFZ\@@FXLM@TDOCQDJ@_@FNTCCNSKQFCY@TXDX_WHSVB]ZEJLSNY\^J[CUVSA_QLFC^RQHUPH[P[NRWCCMLSNPOD_ESALHUK@TDFUZHBLJ\XGKL^NXA\EVHSP[D_C^B_^JCX^W]CHBAX]POG@SSAZQ\LE[DCNMUPG_VSC@VJM Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:51:10 GMT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19320 Date: 2008-01-11T18:51:10+00:00 List-Id: Jeffrey R. Carter wrote: > Phaedrus wrote: > >> Okay, I guess we all agree, Ada is a heck of a language and we all >> love it. (Or else why would we be here?) But the implied question >> that started this thread was, well, what's WRONG with the ol' gal? >> Instead of making this an Ada-love-fest, how about doing some honest >> soul-searching about what's missing, wrong, or just too hard for the >> programming world in general? The current lack of a DOD mandate >> isn't the reason for Ada's diminishing market share, the market share >> is the result of a real or imagined problem with the language, >> environment or something else. So I'd like to propose that we put all >> of your Mensa-caliber gray matter to work and determine what's wrong >> or lacking. > > > Ada is a SW-engineering language. It enforces SW-engineering principles. > 98% of developers are coders, not SW engineers. It should not be a > surprise that they don't choose a SW-engineering language. > > We don't let construction workers design bridges or choose the materials > for them, but we regularly let the construction workers design and > choose the materials for significant SW projects. This is probably > because there is significant liability for incompetent civil engineers, > and none for incompetent SW engineers. > >> 1. It's relatively intimidating to learn. >> >> Not that it needs to be, but between a needlessly complicated LRM >> and academia-bound (-and-hopefully-gagged) textbooks, a neophyte >> shouldn't dive in without a full scuba set. It gets deep, fast. And >> if you didn't get on the Ada-train in the mid 80's, then the learning >> curve is STEEP. Nice folks like Dean Gonzales did their best to >> create annotated LRM's in the 80's, should that effort get going again? > > > A controlled study by the US Military Academy found Ada to be a better > 1st language than Pascal, which was designed as a teaching language. > >> 2. More emphasis on cleverness than usefulness on rugged, reusable code. >> >> Have you noticed how many folks would rather use a bunch of tasks, >> or do umpteen levels of inheritance, when something simple would work >> just fine? These ivory-tower things are real nice, but isn't it more >> important that it be able to be reused in LESS time than it took to >> write the darn thing? Has the KISS rule been forgotten? Honest, it's >> okay that package Hammer isn't completely safe for objects of type >> Toe, if you document it. And don't even get me started on people who >> make their own types (AKA "Bobs_Integer") when the predefined type >> would work just fine. > > > SW engineers can create useful abstractions, making things simpler. > Coders can't, and tend to create designs that make things more complex > than they need to be. > > And don't get me started on people who use Integer when an > application-specific type would be a much better choice. On the contrary, this more often than not obfuscates, particularly for future maintainance purposes. > >> It really is quicker and easier to create small C apps for Windows >> (The prevalent environment) than Ada. Why? What's are your favorite >> gripes? What could be made easier? Since a lot of large projects >> start life as little projects and little demos, if we make it easier >> to make little projects then maybe the big projects will come our way. > > > My experience is that it's easier to get something running in C than in > Ada. Getting something that seems to be correct tends to take longer in > C than in Ada, and getting something where I'm confident that it's > correct takes even longer. > > Ada sometimes seems to avoid taking advantage of its opportunities. Ada > 95, with tasking improvements, came out just before Windows 95, the 1st > widely used OS with multitasking support. I suggested that we promote > Ada 95 as the language of choice for Windows 95, but that didn't happen. > Now multiprocessors are becoming common, and a language with good, > high-level support for parallelism should be the language of choice for > such systems. Maybe we can take advantage of this opportunity. > > A standard, portable, Ada-oriented, easy to use for most basic tasks, > non-GPL GUI library would go a long way to making Ada more attractive. > One of Java's big attractions was its portable GUI library. It wasn't > perfect, but that wasn't a concern for most users. > -- Gary Scott mailto:garylscott@sbcglobal dot net Fortran Library: http://www.fortranlib.com Support the Original G95 Project: http://www.g95.org -OR- Support the GNU GFortran Project: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows it can't be done. -- Henry Ford