Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

["Richard Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net>]

"Chris Humphries" <chris@unixfu.net> wrote in message
news:49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com...
> Hello,
>
>    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).
>
There are a lot of reasons.   One of my favorites is the one
that suggests that it was killed by the compiler publishers.

In early Ada 83, this argument goes, the compiler publishers
realized that they had a captive audience in the DoD.  This
led them to charge per-programmer prices for their compilers
that were so high that the ordinary programmer could not
afford to buy a compiler.

On top of that, the larger compiler publishers, while giving
lip service to commercial utilization of the language, focused
all their sales effort on the DoD -- not even the other branches
of government -- just the DoD.

Further, machine vendors who had to bid an Ada compiler for
the DoD often had no intention of anyone ever actually using
their compiler.   Tandem, for example, had a "checkbox"
compiler, but provided no interfaces to its own operating
system, development tools, or anything else in its product
line that would make using Ada attractive.  They were not
alone in this.

There were some low-cost compilers, notably Janus and
Meridian.   While these were pretty good products, they
did not quite meet the needs of day-to-day programmers,
and most programmers of the early microcomputer era
found they could accomplish more with BASIC than they
could with the existing Ada compilers and associated
toolsets.

In general, the Ada compiler publishers never put the kind
of energy into creating an attractive environment for commercial
Ada as would have been necessary.   There were those within
those organizations who did strive for that kind of thing.  Dr.
Brosgol worked very hard to make commercial Ada a reality,
but he was pretty much (but not totally) alone much of the
time.

So, as the compiler publishers found themselves able to charge
whatever the traffic would bear, they kept their prices so high
that no commercial organization could justify Ada as a choice
of languages -- not when so many other tools were so available,
including development environments, database interfaces, VDT
development tools, etc.

This whole picture changed with the advent of GNAT, CLAW,
JEWL, and many other good compilers and tools based on the
Ada 95 standard.  But by that time, Ada had already developed
a reputation as cumbersome (not true), too big (not true), and
only used by the Department of Defense (most true).

Once a language, or any other product, has gotten a bad
reputation, it is difficult to overcome it. I know people who
will not buy a Jaguar because it is, by reputation, so hard to
maintain.   Others will not buy a Volkswagen because it is
Hitler's car (and the VW van was designed, according to
them, to help transport people to the holocaust).  One
can name countless products that, no matter how they fix
themselves, have lost their potential market because of a
bad reputation.

Are the Ada 83 compiler publishers partly to blame because
of their greed or shortsightedness?    Well, maybe not entirely,
but there are those in our community who do see it that way.

Richard Riehle