At 01:33 PM 4/17/98 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> That isn't merely an amusing comment - it's the kind of analysis of
>evolutionary pressures that helps explain what survives and what
>doesn't. Many managers, much of the time, try to do what's best, not
>just what gets them promoted. The ones who get promoted, however,
>are the ones who did plenty of what got them promoted. Either Ada
>must be perceived as showing short-term benefits (power, features,
>etc) or language decision makers must be promoted based on long-term
>criteria (life cycle cost, reliability, and all that).
And so what has happened is that SOME companies that used C or C++ on
large projects got selected against by the market, and are out of business.
However, some large organizations, such as the DoD, ATT, and Microsoft are
seemingly immune to such market forces, so the internal pressures--which
are very different from the market pressures--select against Ada. (Maybe
Y2K will select against the giants.)
Also, there are some start-up companies which succeeded by using C,
C++ or Java right--keeping complexity and program size under control. It
will be interesting to see if those start-up companies continue to succeed,
get big enough to ignore market pressures, or switch to Ada.
Robert I. Eachus
with Standard_Disclaimer;
use Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...
|