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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.66.231.68 with SMTP id te4mr12297608pac.29.1404978162676; Thu, 10 Jul 2014 00:42:42 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.182.40.233 with SMTP id a9mr507obl.36.1404978162498; Thu, 10 Jul 2014 00:42:42 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!r10no502971igi.0!news-out.google.com!gf2ni5igb.0!nntp.google.com!hn18no30273igb.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 00:42:42 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=195.182.34.254; posting-account=bMuEOQoAAACUUr_ghL3RBIi5neBZ5w_S NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.182.34.254 References: <72b1318a-2eb6-4129-af9b-5bcfbb329c5b@googlegroups.com> <3889b2f4-b7c4-4fb0-9f37-6fc56400b1d7@googlegroups.com> <8OednWik9bvZACfORVn_vwA@giganews.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <13bda335-c7a0-47e0-9127-d4c3e80751d9@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Ada's ranking of popularity at IEEE Spectrum From: Maciej Sobczak Injection-Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 07:42:42 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:20833 Date: 2014-07-10T00:42:42-07:00 List-Id: W dniu =C5=9Broda, 9 lipca 2014 17:01:53 UTC+2 u=C5=BCytkownik Brad Moore n= apisa=C5=82: > I think if the goal is to produce a=20 > document that promotes the use of Ada, then I think maybe a better=20 > approach would be to focus on Ada specifically, and highlight the things= =20 > that Ada got right, rather than try to point out problems in other=20 > languages. Exactly. Considering the expected target, the Ada language is most likely t= o be adopted by C and C++ programmers and the problem with many pro-Ada doc= uments is that they try to focus on criticising C++. It's not a good way to= make friends and hostility is not going to work here. I have tried to promote Ada by doing something different: get the list of t= hings that are considered to be features (!) in C++ and show that Ada does = them even better. Like, say, control over memory allocation schemes. Every = reasonably competent C++ programmer knows that having the possibility to wr= ite a custom memory allocator by means of overloaded new operators is an im= portant language feature that can improve performance or provide other bene= fits; show them that Ada is even more flexible with this (by associating al= location scheme with pointer type instead of the target object type) and yo= u get people at least intrigued. There are many more aspects where you can = spin the discussion towards "Ada is even better where C++ is good" mindset. I did not manage to introduce Ada for production projects this way (but we = did some side-way projects thanks to this), but the level of interest was c= ertainly much higher than with the "if you put a stray semicolon here it wi= ll be a disaster" method that unfortunately many Ada advocates still believ= e in. Don't try to promote Ada by criticising other languages. It just doesn't wo= rk. --=20 Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com