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!news2.google.com!proxad.net!newsfeed.stueberl.de!news-mue1.dfn.de!news-ham1.dfn.de!news.uni-hamburg.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!uni-duisburg.de!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 10:20:55 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Trace: a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de 1093688455 26077 134.91.1.34 (28 Aug 2004 10:20:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.uni-duisburg.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 10:20:55 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.8-20010221 ("Blue Water") (UNIX) (HP-UX/B.11.00 (9000/800)) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3110 Date: 2004-08-28T10:20:55+00:00 List-Id: Kevin Cline wrote: : Georg Bauhaus wrote in message news:... :> : But Ada has been almost universally ignored by the Computer Science :> : research community. :> :> Could you give some examples? : An example of what? Of computer scientists who do not program in or : teach Ada? I had thought of Computer Science research. When it deals with concurrent execution in language studies or in programming oriented presentation, or the development of programming languages, there seems to be a certain awareness of Ada, even of proteced types, for example. Quite a few people I've met didn't like Ada because of they have seen it as associated with the political, military, and industrial organisations mentioned in Richard Riehle's posting. Indeed, if computer languages and compilers do not care about the purpose of a program, people do. (This is a reason why I'm somewhat uncomfortable using Ada, sometimes. The military and the weapon makers seem to be so close... ;-) People also judge languages not only by their technical merits or by how well you can express ideas in code. They appear to be influenced largely by the (non-technical) reputation of a language, by watching the peer group for acceptable pet languages, or "in"-languages, etc. (For example, Robert Axelrodt (The Complexity of Cooperation, 1997, Princeton University Press) recommends some languages to his students/readers. He compares C, FORTRAN, (Visual) Basic, Pascal, and C++. LISP, and some math languages are mentioned in a footnote. "LISP ... is especially good for handling data structures and programs interchangeably". ... "My advice is to avoid FORTRAN" ... "is an old language that is not as convenient to use as the others." ... "If a friend or coworker is available to answer questions about Pascal, for example, pick Pascal. ... designed to be a first language for serious programmers. It is easy to learn, and is structured to encourage good programming habits. Most of simulations in this volume were programmed in Pascal." ... C is the most common procedural language among serious programmers." ... "C++ was chosen as the foundation for the Java programming language" ... "If you are fairly sure that you will be doing programming for some time and want to start with a language that you can grow with, then C or C++ is the best choice." It would be interesting to know how influential this book is. But what will people who know these languages say about the comments? In particular, the "or" in the last relative clause is misinformation that if spread leads to a serious misconception in my view. (If you look at the FORTRAN code, http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/Software/ComplexCoop.html, you get an idea of why the author, referring to FORTRAN's "age and prior popularity" still says no to FORTRAN in 1997.) -- Georg