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!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "Nick Roberts" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:14:33 +0100 Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de DzihDtd1Km9IzK90v7PxNQaUke0Z5fNjgHn+a9eK6bhHqPAvU= User-Agent: Opera M2/7.51 (Win32, build 3798) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2679 Date: 2004-08-11T18:14:33+01:00 List-Id: On 11 Aug 2004 06:56:17 -0700, Chris Humphries wrote: > Would like to open up the newsgroup for discussion of why > ADA is not as popular as (of now me learning it) to it is > not as popular as other languages (Perl, Java, C++, C#, C). I'm pretty sure the main reasons are: that there has never been a (really) big corporation backing Ada, in the same way that many of the languages you mention have had; that Ada is not a language suited for or much liked by many non-professional programmers. Microsoft have a huge historical investment in Basic (VB), C (in which Windows was written (it was nearly Pascal)), C++ (in which they hedged the future of their C codebase). They have poured vast resources into developing and marketing tools supporting these languages. The latest big thing from Microsoft is C#, and they have promoted it relentlessly. Sun's fortunes were founded on Unix, so they have a huge vested interest in the C language. They have done much to promote both. Lately, Sun have placed all their faith in Java, and they have poured vast resources into popularising it. Languages such as Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and many others have gained popularity with non-professional programmers, who are several orders of magnitude greater in number than the professionals, thus boosting the following of these languages to such large numbers as to create their own unstoppable momentum. This is not to denegrate non-pros, by the way; some of these languages are now used by pros, for applications they are suited to. It's not to dengrate the languages, either. I think Python and Ruby are both excellent designs. > So, why is ADA not as popular as the above languages to the > world (well especially opensource developers) outside of dod and > defense contractors and banks? It seems like an extremely powerful > and awesome language, Ada isn't really an awesome or extremely powerful language. It has many advantages over many other compiled imperative languages, including C (and probably also C++, C#, and Java). It also has its fair share of limitations and annoying quirks. > and it is just so easy to look at the code and tell what is going > on and what is what. If the program is well written. C code /can/ be easy to look at etc., but it tends not to be in practice. Honestly, this is probably because most C code is written by bad programmers, whereas most Ada code is not. I have seen superb C code (often written by a non-pro, what is more). Ada does /help/ the programmer to write good code. > It can be OO Albeit a somewhat limited form of OO :-) Actually, Ada 2005 promises to be much better in this area. > and can run tasks concurrently. I think this is one of Ada's greatest strengths. > It's runtime and compile checking is awesome. It's good, and certainly one of the biggest practical advantages of the language. However, there are many other languages that have good checking (C and C++ are notably not among them). > GNAT is free and available to all to use. Yes, and GNAT is one of the language's biggest assets. It is of very high quality, and is used in many commercial applications. Programming languages are very much a case of horses for courses, and there are many, many courses that Python and other languages are far better suited to than Ada. For /some/ kinds of application (typically embedded, systems, and safety-critical software) Ada is one of the classiest acts in town. I am currently considering Python or Ruby to write an XML application, in preference to Ada, because it will probably be a lot easier to write this kind of application in Python or Ruby, both because of the languages themselves, and also because of the superb utility libraries available for them. Now, where did I put that asbestos suit? -- Nick Roberts