Re: Ada

[tsikes@netcom.com (Terry Sikes)]

In article <84uk54$6jl$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <84tj1p$r2g$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>,
>  tsikes@netcom.com (Terry Sikes) wrote:
>
>> o  embedded systems
>
>This is a very small sliver of the total development market

I'd be interested in knowing how "small" - there are a ton of
products with embedded microprocessors.

>> o  Unix/mainframe server-side  (this has picked up recently;)
>
>Still a small player development wise compared to PC's

Really?  You think the total number of development dollars spent on
server-side software is "small" compared to client side?  Even with
the Internet taking off?

>> o  Mac
>
>This is a VERY small fraction of the total PC development
>effort.

Macs are sitting at around 5% market share right now, and I'd guess
more development is done on them, percentage-wise, than is done on
Windows.

>> o  Linux
>
>Getting larger, but still dwarfed by PC's

Well, Linux installs are hard to measure, but I'd heard a figure of
10,000,000+ over a year ago.  The thing is though, that a very high
percentage of Linux boxes are development boxes.

>> I think you're underestimating the amount of C/C++ even on the
>> Windows side, also.
>
>Most university trained people *over* estimate the amount of
>C and C++, precisely because they don't know the widely
>used languages (COBOL and Visual Basic).

Although there are some, I think you'll find the numbers of PC COBOL
programmers to be quite small...  ;-)

As to VB, I agree its widely used...but I still think that C/C++
account for more than 15% of Windows development dollars.

>> Bill has some level of vested interest in promoting VB,
>> after all.
>
>Well I don't think he cares too much if people use VB or
>visual C++. What is interesting about his figures is the
>Delphi and Java figures, which he *does* care about :-)

C'mon, Bill has a soft spot for BASIC.  ;-)

Delphi has its good points, but just think if it had been implemented
in Ada95 instead of Object Pascal...

At any rate, its fairly pointless to discuss language marketshare
without better figures - anyone have any?

Terry
--
tsikes@netcom.com