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

[isaac1.0@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 5:25:17 AM UTC-7, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> The first language I really liked was Pascal.
> 
> But the Pascal family of languages (including Ada) have
> 
> clearly failed to become popular, at least compared
> 
> to the C-family (C, C++, C#, ....)
> 
> The question is why did this happen?
> 
.
.
.
> 
> What is your theory on this? Was there another
> 
> reason or set of reasons?

There are simply some other strange intagible factors that happen to any language. Why did Python succeed but the much older Rexx/ObjectRexx not? I would say both are equally enjoyable to use and quite similar in many ways.

C pre-dated Ada, no? Having a free compiler & toolchain included in most *NIX systems certainly didn't hurt either. I know in university environment the free tool in hand beats anything that you need money to buy. Starving grad students & research labs are always short on cash and that trumps anything else.

I remember learning Pascal, it was nice, but didn't think too much of it. The prejudice I see against it (and other similar languages) is that it is seen as a "learning" language, so it's not good enough for real work.

I had to learn C, I remember I hated it. I still dislike it, but not as much as C++ :-), it is not "fun" to program in. Then recently I had to pick up Delphi for my job and in comparison, what a breath of fresh air! It was way more fun and easy to program in. I spent time debugging algorithmic errors, not silly syntax stuff or some other oddball errors.
Then I did something really crazy and decided to pick up Ada, with the only thing I knew about it was "it was for military stuff". Only later found it descended from the Pascal heritage, it made sense that it looked very similar to Delphi and it was also fun. 

But for someone like me who has the desire to learn a new language and even specifically Ada, there are several roadblocks, not the least of which is my colleagues thinking it is a "dead" language:

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.
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.
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. Okay, now what happens when I need Ada to access scanners, cameras, etc?
4) Embedded support: This should be the easiest, less need for external libraries, no need for GUI's and such ... but I find I have no way to compile Ada to embedded microncontrollers, especially ARM cores. (Yes, I know AdaCore has pay option for ARM, but when you have neither marketshare nor mindshare, it's impossible to convince people to spring $$$ on "unproven" tools & languages).

I would say the above gripes apply to many non-C languages.