From: RC <rc1@clanchy.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Success: Ada versus C
Date: 1997/06/04
Date: 1997-06-04T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <zdqyUFAeYYlzUw6H@clanchy.demon.co.uk> (raw)
As I have been given to understand, C became popular by the back door by
being given away as part of Unix which was itself sold for $1 to
universities. The commercial world then gained an unlimited supply of
Unix fans who were C programmers, a powerful force towards commercial
acceptance.
Commercial success has led to the development of C and Unix which are
now very large oak trees in comparison to the little acorns they started
as and I would suggest, much less affordable to students.
Ada started as a large, expensive project funded by a large, well funded
end user. There has been little reason for suppliers to introduce Ada
as an inexpensive loss-leader. The restriction that Ada compilers
should all be fully compliant to a comprehensive specification is also a
set-back for would be vendors.
Had Ada been around when C and Unix were developed, I'm sure it would
have had a better head start. Suppose Unix had been written in Ada and
someone had subsequently tried to introduce C, it could only have been
meant as a joke.
Fortran is still going strong although C is really a descendant from it
which effectively has all of its good points and omits some (many?) of
the bad.
By the time C has enough in the way of libraries and add ons to provide
all of the functionality claimed for it there must be little difference
in size between it and Ada. There are some nasty little bad habits,
inherent in the way C is specified which Ada attempts to improve on.
Hopefully Ada won't die of its grandiose vision and C won't swamp it
with its Bindweed like insistence.
RC1
next reply other threads:[~1997-06-04 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1997-06-04 0:00 RC [this message]
1997-06-06 0:00 ` Success: Ada versus C Arthur Schwarz
1997-06-06 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1997-06-06 0:00 ` Corey Minyard
1997-06-06 0:00 ` Dale Pontius
1997-06-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-06-09 0:00 ` Dale Pontius
1997-06-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-06-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1997-06-08 0:00 ` RC
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