Re: Ada's ranking of popularity at IEEE Spectrum

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Sunday, July 27, 2014 3:19:40 PM UTC-5, sbelm...@gmail.com wrote:
> My point is that even 'good' APIs (like OpenSSL or OpenGL) inherently stink of untyped C, and it becomes
> a delicate balancing act of figuring out at what point you've failed to implement the spec everyone
> knows and instead succeeded at inventing a new (better) API that nobody wants.  Victor Porton's copious
> posts seem to suggest similar problems.

It does seem that the burning issue to solve in Ada202X is how to facilitate making thick bindings easier
1) to bring the Ada semantics to an Ada API that wraps a C (or subset of C++) API;
then
2) export that Ada API back out to C (and/or subset of C++) via a thin binding that imposes as much type safety as possible.

By dividing and conquering the C world (i.e., into 2 camps:  type-unsafe C APIs used by the unwashed masses versus type-safe C APIs used by superior intellects), Ada could prove itself valuable as an intermediate layer and win over converts to just program in Ada all the time.