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From: "Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to get Ada to ?cross the chasm??
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2018 10:39:47 +0200
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Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:51783
Date: 2018-04-29T10:39:47+02:00
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On 04/29/2018 02:39 AM, patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org wrote:
> 
> I am not a professional program[mer], I make my living repairing and/or reselling scientific instruments, please keep this in mind.

I'm going to hijack this comment and twist it to serve as a way to repeat yet again:

Ada is a language for software engineers. If you're a S/W eng, Ada supports the 
way you think and you'll be able to produce correct, reliable, simple, clear, 
and understandable S/W using it much more quickly than with most other languages.

If you're not a S/W eng (a coder), Ada will fight you every step of the way and 
you won't like it. Coders prefer coders' languages that let them easily make as 
big a mess as they like.

In my experience, S/W engs are about 2% of developers. 98% of developers are 
coders. So, on one side of the chasm we have Ada and the S/W engs who like it. 
On the other side we have everyone else.

How can we get Ada to cross the chasm?

1. Dumb Ada down until it becomes a coders' language. Some steps have been taken 
in this direction: see anonymous access types, for example.

2. Find an effective way to distinguish S/W engs from coders and prohibit coders 
from developing S/W.

We can hope that 1. won't proceed any further and liability will force us to 2., 
but I'm not holding my breath.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Ditto, you provincial putz?"
Blazing Saddles
86