Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

Kevin Cline wrote:

> It's unfortunate to see this circular ad-hominem argument is repeated
> over and over again in this newsgroup.  "I am a good programmer.  I
> like Ada.  Therefore all good programmers should like Ada. 
> Programmers who don't like Ada must be poor programmers."  And even
> the first assertion is doubtful.
> 
> No progress can come from this argument.  Better to notice that a lot
> of very good programmers have rejected Ada, and figure out why.

No progress can come when a statement of facts (2% of developers are 
software engineers) is treated as an attack. (There are plenty of "good 
programmers" who are not software engineers.) If someone sees himself in 
the facts and doesn't like what he sees, that does not qualify as an attack.

It has been known for at least 3 decades that a very small proportion of 
developers are orders of magnitude more effective than the rest. The 
common characteristics of these effective developers include avoiding 
unnecessary complexity, creating usable abstractions, and putting much 
more effort into pre-code activites.

In my 29 years of professional software-development experience, I have 
found that only about 2% of developers fall into this category. I have 
also found that about 2% of developers like Ada and dislike the C family 
of languages, and the other 98% have the opposite opinion. That there is 
significant overlap between software engineers and those who like Ada is 
not surprising.

I call the 2% of effective software developers software engineers, and 
the other 98%, coders. What we have in software development is a failure 
to distinguish between these 2 groups. Allowing coders to design 
software and make language choices is the same as allowing construction 
workers to design bridges and decide what construction materials to use. 
We would not be surprised to have bridges that failed as often as 
software does.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"My legs are gray, my ears are gnarled, my eyes are old and bent."
Monty Python's Life of Brian
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