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Craig Spannring <[log in to unmask]>
Tue, 9 May 2000 11:54:20 -0600
text/plain (92 lines)
It is interesting reading through some of the comments.  I think that
Ada supporters would do good to study those answers.  These are the
reasons (right or wrong) people don't use Ada.  If you want to
increase Ada's use, you better find a way to address these issues.




  AdrianG wrote:
     My understanding is that Ada was designed, in part, to help keep
     the programmer from making some kinds of mistakes.

And keeping the programmer from making mistakes is a bad thing?


  Hynman wrote:
     Ada was developed by the government, for military
     applications. Since it's scope was so specialized

I've run into this before.  It is interesting that many people think
Ada is too specialized.  I'm sure if people found out that one of the
design goals of Ada was to eliminate the hundreds of specialized
languages used at DOD people would complain that it was too
generalized.


  Skweetis wrote:
     I don't use Ada because there aren't very many library bindings
     for it.

Finally a criticism that isn't completely false.
Microsoft/Sun/SGI/etc has legions of programmers and are constantly
defining new APIs.  Everyone else will always be one step behind.


  underclocked wrote:
     There are almost no professional opportunities for ADA
     programmers,

This is always a hard one to get around without a substantial pocket
book.  Witness the mini-compact disk.  Nobody uses them because nobody
produces inexpensive mini disk players.  Nobody produces inexpensive
mini disk players because nobody uses them.

In my own project, I'm having a hard time gaining management
acceptance for Ada.  I've worked through all of the other fallacies
about Ada, but I'm having a hard time convincing management that good
Ada programmers are just as easy to get as good C++ programmers.


  ader wrote:
     Anyway, the only programming projects I really enjoyed were the C
     ones

Many people enjoy the arcane.  It makes people proud of themselves
when they track down a problem on their own.  On the other hand, Ada
compilers do nothing but criticize.  The compiler is constantly
saying, "Your code is wrong."  People don't like criticism.  They'd
much rather have compiler that says, "Yes, your code is wonderful."
Later on they even get the self-esteem boost when they track down
the bugs.  For most people finding and fixing bugs is a self-esteem
boosting process.  Ada limits that indulgence.


  Arrogant-Bastard wrote:
     specifically the design-by-committee approach

It is a common perception that Ada was designed by committee and is
therefore bad.  This is just an example of how people make up their
minds first and justify their opinions later.  Facts don't matter to
people, only opinion matters.




Alex Otier writes:
 > The question was sent to Slashdot over the weekend, the URL is here
 >
 > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1435238
 >
 > --
 > Alex Otier


--
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 Life is short.                  | Craig Spannring
      Bike hard, ski fast.       | [log in to unmask]
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  When all you've got is Perl, everything feels like a smashed thumb
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