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!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <411B58DE.4020306@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:48:05 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.1.184 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1092311285 209.165.1.184 (Thu, 12 Aug 2004 04:48:05 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 04:48:05 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2687 Date: 2004-08-12T11:48:05+00:00 List-Id: In fairness, the DoD actually *did* throw a lot of money at Ada. IMHO, it just didn't get spent effectively. Not much was done to "Market" the language or "Prime The Pump" by getting good, inexpensive compilers out into the hands of lots of programmers. Gnat was a good example of how that can help, but it came along rather late in the day and by then, opinions had been formed and other things had come along that had captured the market better, so it wasn't as effective as it might have been. (Imagine what the world would have been like if back in 1983, the DoD had funded a free compiler of descent quality that would run on a PC or some of the other popular hardware of the day. There wasn't anything quite like that back then and maybe people would have used it just because it was the only free compiler you could get.) Ada still has a pretty good following, but it does need to expand on that base. Things like Gnat and GtkAda help provide some of the necessary infrastructure. An "Out Of The Box" database and a library of utilities that goes along with it would be good additions that would help provide a more complete programming kit. That, and a little "Newness" that could be hyped as providing something you can't get elsewhere and Ada might see some new growth in new arenas. MDC Nick Roberts wrote: > > I'm pretty sure the main reasons are: that there has never been a > (really) big corporation backing Ada, in the same way that many of the > languages you mention have had; that Ada is not a language suited for > or much liked by many non-professional programmers. -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================