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,c406e0c4a6eb74ed X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "Marc A. Criley" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 10:54:43 -0500 Message-ID: <2nutq5F4sdqqU1@uni-berlin.de> References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> <1092233689.719755@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de IVLWdcGeyy1gr1D40zzB1QgimW1vKMESPr9jQkxongspuG2yrM X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2675 Date: 2004-08-11T10:54:43-05:00 List-Id: "Hyman Rosen" wrote in message news:1092233689.719755@master.nyc.kbcfp.com... > Chris Humphries wrote: > > Would like to open up the newsgroup for discussion of why > > ADA is not as popular as (of now me learning it) to it is > > not as popular as other languages (Perl, Java, C++, C#, C). > > Aagh! Run for your lives! :-) Oh, what the hell... :-) My take on why the Ada language itself (regardless of availability of tools and libraries and such) isn't as popular among programmers as other languages: Every programmer thinks they're better than average--half of them are wrong. Most programmers think they're much better than average--most are not. Ada's enforcement of strong typing and runtime checks points out when a programmer has made a mistake, whether as a result of requirements, design, or coding error. (Of course no one is suggesting that Ada would catch all requirements or design errors--that's a ridiculous mischaracterization--but when errant reqs or design lead to a particular implementation, internal contradictions may result in type conflicts or constraint errors.) Over the years I've heard much cursing from coworkers about how they can't get their Ada program to compile, or it just keeps raising these exceptions when they run it, and they don't have anything like that to deal with when coding in C or C++. Here's a clue: the problem isn't with the language! Fix your code! So Ada has the "unfortunate" characteristic of strictly enforcing what a programmer codes, and therefore when errors are present there's no sliding by with out-of-range data or quiet ignoring of inconsistent interfaces or arguments. The language hits you over the head with them, and makes you deal with your errors right now. Which can sometimes be a humbling experience. Marc A. Criley McKae Technologies "The Efficient Production of High Quality Software"