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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.68.133.138 with SMTP id pc10mr11527934pbb.5.1404667126132; Sun, 06 Jul 2014 10:18:46 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.182.109.234 with SMTP id hv10mr108073obb.2.1404667125820; Sun, 06 Jul 2014 10:18:45 -0700 (PDT) Path: border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!hn18no4100175igb.0!news-out.google.com!bp9ni2747igb.0!nntp.google.com!hn18no4100165igb.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 10:18:45 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=71.252.147.203; posting-account=zwxLlwoAAAChLBU7oraRzNDnqQYkYbpo NNTP-Posting-Host: 71.252.147.203 References: <72b1318a-2eb6-4129-af9b-5bcfbb329c5b@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <3889b2f4-b7c4-4fb0-9f37-6fc56400b1d7@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Ada's ranking of popularity at IEEE Spectrum From: "Dan'l Miller" Injection-Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 17:18:45 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:187396 Date: 2014-07-06T10:18:45-07:00 List-Id: On Sunday, July 6, 2014 11:25:04 AM UTC-5, gautier...@hotmail.com wrote: > > For example, would a first-order-logic library attract Prolog programme= rs? > You want to attract a few programmers of language #29 in the hope of impr= oving the rank of language #36 ? As a matter of fact: yes. Ada will not get more popular by blind copying = of C++. Why? Because C++ got more popular throughout the late-1980s and t= hroughout the 1990s by copying many of Ada's wisdoms. C++ & Ada are quite = similar on C++'s bullet-point feature-list basis that is touted to woo pote= ntial C++ programmers to C++. Left unstated by the C++ wooing is that C++'= s & Ada's primary differentiators are: 1) that C++ has so many undefined behaviors; and 2) C++ discovered that templates are Turing complete and have a quite-synta= ctically-uncouth poor-man's functional-programming language by accident. And those are not anything that Ada wants at all. Indeed, these are C++'s = achilles heals to attack by Ada doing something well that encourages C++ to= do a bad job mimicking via 3) more & more undefined behaviors exposing the C++ programmer to more & mo= re of a house of cards; and 4) more & more complexity in C++'s functional-programming via templates. What will make Ada more popular is for people to get from Ada what they can= not get easily or at all from other languages. The goal of the Ada communi= ty must always be to figure out what that new special sauce is to sell more= McAda burgers, preferably a special sauce for Ada that is impossible or im= practical in other languages, such as too easily stepping into C++ undefine= d-behavior cow-pies all over the C++ pasture or requiring an excessive amou= nt of functional-programming via C++ templates. By constantly adding more = special sauces for numerous niche markets, and perhaps one big special sauc= e for a breakthrough in Ada's core competencies (a brand new/drastically-ex= panded analogue of what Ada1983 did in the late-1970s & early-1980s for com= pile-time checking of likely bugs), eventually a greater preponderance of p= rogrammers will ask C++: "Where's the beef? Why can't C++ have what Ada h= as?" But the numerous special sauces for Ada's clams to fame must come fir= st for C++ programmers to have any envy at all---just like the envy that C+= + had for the feature-set-superior Ada1983 during C++'s rise during the lat= e-1980s and the 1990s. Likewise for identifying Java's achilles heal(s) and Ada one-upping Java in= those areas of Java's weakness: Imagine a Qt 'cute' or WxWidgets designed= from the ground up in Ada-think instead of C++isms to one-up Java-with-Swi= ng, solving whatever problems are commonplace in Java-with-Swing (e.g., lac= k of native look-&-feel, lack of native multithreading, lack of machine-cod= e instead of JVM bytecode, lack of Ada compile-time strictness & lifetime-p= roving). The path to Ada popularity: More special sauces for more niche markets that cause wounds in other langu= ages' Achilles' heals to fester.