Re: Why .ads as well as .adb?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Optikos" writes:
...
>Ada standardization efforts (and even SPARK's ability to model pointers)
>are awesome advances, but to be honest they are awesome achievements
>because the bar throughout the industry is set so low:  in the land of the
>blind, the one-eyed man can easily rise to be the king.  Think 
>exponentially,
>not incrementally.

This is a good point. Part of the reason that Ada isn't used more is because 
while it is better than other choices, it is not that much better. Inertia 
is an important part of life. Indeed, I don't upgrade/replace much desktop 
software anymore since it is more of hinderance to work (because of things 
changed/removed) than a benefit (new features that I'm unlikely to use). [My 
primary programming editor was last updated in 1986!] That's certainly the 
case for practitioners in other languages as well.

If one really wants to make a splash, one would have to come up with 
something much better. Personally, I don't think that is possible for a 
conventional programming language - at some point, text itself becomes the 
limitation. (But I don't have a clue what that next step should be, 
graphical systems have mostly failed, both for expressivity and usability. 
Probably not programming at all is the next step, which renders all of us 
irrelevant.)

                                          Randy.