Mr. Groleau wrote:

> I recently read one of their articles on "how to choose a language" for an
> embedded project.  Basically, the algorithm was:

  [snip, snip, snip, of evidence showing bias toward C ]

The history of Embedded Systems Programming is heavily weighted
toward small microcontrollers that are seldom targeted by Ada
compilers.  For example, there is still a large readership
devoted to I-8051 processors and others in that category.

The reality is that Ada does not meet the needs of these
programmers, largely because

                    1) There are no Ada compilers,
                    2) They see anything other than assembler
                       or C as too far from the hardware, and
                       therefore, too inefficient.

For many of these embedded systems programmers, even C is too high
level a language.  It is improbably that we will ever see this
group adopting Ada, even a subset of Ada.  You know I am an Ada
advocate, but I see Ada as ill-suited to applications such as those
that typify the kind of project targeted to the I-8051.  Assembler
and Forth are still the better choices for such applications.  Notice,
I did not include C in that set of choices.

Richard Riehle
AdaWorks Software Engineering
http://www.adaworks.com