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!newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!a6202946!not-for-mail From: Jeffrey Carter Organization: jrcarter commercial-at acm [period | full stop] org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 MSIE 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> <4CsVc.28876$9Y6.4063@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:22:52 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.184.105.221 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net 1093569772 63.184.105.221 (Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:22:52 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:22:52 PDT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3067 Date: 2004-08-27T01:22:52+00:00 List-Id: 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 81