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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no 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!postnews2.google.com!not-for-mail From: kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: 27 Aug 2004 08:22:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> <4CsVc.28876$9Y6.4063@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 170.215.184.138 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1093620155 31922 127.0.0.1 (27 Aug 2004 15:22:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 15:22:35 +0000 (UTC) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3087 Date: 2004-08-27T08:22:34-07:00 List-Id: Jeffrey Carter wrote in message news:... > 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. The efficacy of much pre-code activity is debatable. Many organizations have had great success with more agile methods of minimal up-front design followed by test-driven development and continuous refactoring.