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=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable 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!freenix!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: Marius Amado Alves Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 18:17:21 +0100 Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> <413e2fbd$0$30586$626a14ce@news.free.fr> <1371289.WCcgO7lass@linux1.krischik.com> <1094926196.802462@yasure> NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1095009449 1654 212.85.156.195 (12 Sep 2004 17:17:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:17:29 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 12 Sep 2004 17:17:09.0764 (UTC) FILETIME=[561CAC40:01C498EC] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3629 Date: 2004-09-12T18:17:21+01:00 >>K&R C can be criticized on many grounds, but "useful" is not >>a valid one, IMO. The original C was one of the most "useful" >>languages we've seen. Witness its rapid spread through >>academia, > > That was because of the low cost of the Unix/C combination to academia. FWIW, I believe the main factor of C success was (is) the simplicity of its semantics. It equates the machine. For this reason--and this alone--I find C actually very pedagogical. It's very easy to understand C given knowledge of the computer architecture, and vice-versa--and both ways at the same time. And C does not get in the way. (A hand grenade, I know.) /* I remember reading K&R as a tutorial, and loving it, and finding it superior to the few languages I had used (BASIC, Clipper...) and learnt (COBOL) before. This was in the early 1980's. I had no idea of the existence of Ada (or Algol, or Simula, but I knew Pascal, and Prolog) then. There was no Internet. And I was not in any University (not that I believe this would have helped much). If had been thrown Ada in front of me by then I'd probably be a different person today. So I adopted C in the early 1980's, used it professionally, and experienced many problems (no surprise here now). Until I was indeed acquainted with Ada 95 in the mid 1990's, in a postgraduation at FCTUNL. I tried it and experienced orders of magnitude decrease in debbugging time. And increase in correcteness, reliability, etc. So now I'm married to Ada, but C was my first love. */