> That is the crux of the matter! You don't read about Ada in the mainstream > computing press, mainly because it is not used for mass-market applications. > Generally the only time you do hear of it is when e.g. Ariane blows up and > someone blames the Ada code! No one seems to remember the number of satellites, > aircraft, trains and so on that rely on Ada, with the lives of thousands of > people every day being taken care of by it! No, all you hear about is Java, C++ > and VB - the things that are used to construct the (mainly unreliable) > applications that people see on their desktop. > But of course! You only read in the press about software that fails, never about software that works! That's why you hear so little about Ada... Lucky we had Ariane 5 ;-) While we're at it, little story about software-that-works: The whole scheduling system of trains in the channel tunnel is done in Ada. Shortly after a shuttle burned into the tunnel, I asked what happened at software level to deal with having only one tunnel. The answer was: "Nothing. We declared the section invalidated, and the software went on scheduling trains in only one tunnel". The presse never echoed this one. Of course, it's much more a matter of design than language, but how comes that good designs are more frequent in Ada programs ? Or is it that good designers are more likely to choose Ada ? --------------------------------------------------------- J-P. Rosen ([log in to unmask]) Visit Adalog's web site at http://pro.wanadoo.fr/adalog