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: 103376,243dc2fb696a49cd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-09!sn-xit-08!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Chris Humphries Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:45:16 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <10lg6b9j3mavpeb@news.supernews.com> User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (X11/20040918) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <11b4d.3849$d5.30042@newsb.telia.net> <415813FE.9090803@unixfu.net> In-Reply-To: <415813FE.9090803@unixfu.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4263 Date: 2004-09-27T09:45:16-04:00 List-Id: I apologize, first thing in the morning on a monday without any caffeine :) Type-o's exist in places, heh. Chris Humphries wrote: > Kevin Cline wrote: > >> >> Again, the original question was "Why isn't Ada more popular?" >> The answer I am giving is that most programmers don't have such an >> overriding concern for safety that they are willing to write twice as >> much code to get the additional safety. >> > > (whoa, what a thread this has become!) > > Thanks, and good answer. Since then asking that question, I have > learned a lot more about Ada. John Barnes' book, "Programming in > Ada 96, 2nd Edition" helped tremendously. A very good book. It is > now nice to understand just what Ada _is_, and not just another > programming language, but more an attempting at progressing software > engineering. > > I also think I understand why Ada is not more popular. Though I > am very thankful for open source, and feel very strongly about about > it, something bad has grown out of it: bad programmers and programs. > Most open source projects seem to have no formal software development > process. There is more an attitude of "shut up and hack", which > typically goes by whatever they get features to do from, which may > be from whatever they want, if there is a TODO list, then you are > lucky. There is usually no goals or anything actually defined, no > use cases (I would put money on most do not even know what one is, > and if they did, what they would use it for), no unit tests or any > automated framework for making sure the code does as designed (which > brings me to my next one), no design documentation or even a design > process. > > Many young/inexperienced programmers do not even see why this is > important, as their code works, and generally they are done with it > then and there. In the real world, and in my job, most of the time > is spend updating code. Good times are when I get to design something > new, most the time is spent doing grunt work. > > In a time when most programs are written by having a 1-2 thought > process of 1) i want my program to do this and 2) type-type-run-repeat, > such languages that allow you to do this easier are more popular, such > as php and perl. > > Granted, I do code perl for some of the legacy projects here (no I am > not a web developer, heh), and if standards are in place, perl code can > be very readable and understandable. Coding standards are nice, yet > seem to be rarely used. > > Again, sorry to start a thread that went off on a 400+ post tangent, > yet now I understand. > > If anyone new to Ada, yet not to programming is reading this, I strongly > recommend getting "Programming in Ada 95, 2nd Edition" by John Barnes. > > Thanks c.l.ada! > > -Chris