Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family?

[gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com]

Le vendredi 18 juillet 2014 20:08:46 UTC+2, isaa...@gmail.com a écrit :

> 1) Where do I get a free compiler & toolchain? There are plenty of choices for C family, Java or whatever. Yes I found GNAT GPL, but it is not as clean an install like others and the quality varies. 2012 was ok, 2013 was sloppy, 2014 seems ok again. Free is important, my employers are not going to let me spend thousands of dollars to try another language when C has been "proven" to work.

You always have the choice of skipping a year if it doesn't work as you expect.
I do so at my job (and for my job :-) )

> 2) GUI. Yeah sorry, these days for many things my end users expect a GUI and Ada doesn't really have it. GtkAda? Sure, but documentation & examples are lacking and often incorrect, plus Gtk is such a pain to use when compared to Windows stuff, Qt or even Java.

If you use Windows, perhaps you'll be interested at this:
http://sf.net/projects/gnavi/

> 3) Supporting libraries. Say I need to work with TIFF files? There's many choices for C (libTIFF is common), they're always available for C. I had to work to find a half-baked option for Delphi, but I'm stuck when it comes to Ada. ImageMagick? Maybe.

Or GID ? http://gen-img-dec.sf.net/ Pure Ada.
Oh, no TIFF. TIFF has lots of subformats - if you want a specific one, contact me...

> Okay, now what happens when I need Ada to access scanners, cameras, etc?

Then it's worth considering interfacing. It's device AND OS specific.
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