Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl)

[Chris Humphries <chris@unixfu.net>]

Kevin Cline wrote:
> 
> Again, the original question was "Why isn't Ada more popular?"  
> 
> The answer I am giving is that most programmers don't have such an
> overriding concern for safety that they are willing to write twice as
> much code to get the additional safety.
> 

(whoa, what a thread this has become!)

Thanks, and good answer. Since then asking that question, I have
learned a lot more about Ada. John Barnes' book, "Programming in
Ada 96, 2nd Edition" helped tremendously. A very good book. It is
now nice to understand just what Ada _is_, and not just another
programming language, but more an attempting at progressing software
engineering.

I also think I understand why Ada is not more popular. Though I
am very thankful for open source, and feel very strongly about about
it, something bad has grown out of it: bad programmers and programs.
Most open source projects seem to have no formal software development
process. There is more an attitude of "shut up and hack", which
typically goes by whatever they get features to do from, which may
be from whatever they want, if there is a TODO list, then you are
lucky. There is usually no goals or anything actually defined, no
use cases (I would put money on most do not even know what one is,
and if they did, what they would use it for), no unit tests or any
automated framework for making sure the code does as designed (which
brings me to my next one), no design documentation or even a design
process.

Many young/inexperienced programmers do not even see why this is
important, as their code works, and generally they are done with it
then and there. In the real world, and in my job, most of the time
is spend updating code. Good times are when I get to design something
new, most the time is spent doing grunt work.

In a time when most programs are written by having a 1-2 thought
process of 1) i want my program to do this and 2) type-type-run-repeat,
such languages that allow you to do this easier are more popular, such
as php and perl.

Granted, I do code perl for some of the legacy projects here (no I am
not a web developer, heh), and if standards are in place, perl code can
be very readable and understandable. Coding standards are nice, yet
seem to be rarely used.

Again, sorry to start a thread that went off on a 400+ post tangent,
yet now I understand.

If anyone new to Ada, yet not to programming is reading this, I strongly
recommend getting "Programming in Ada 95, 2nd Edition" by John Barnes.

Thanks c.l.ada!

-Chris