What is wrong with Ada? - Programming Languages

"martinbishop" <jedibebop@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1176150704.130880.248080@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...[color=blue]
> I've never been scared of "non mainstream" languages, but I was
> wondering, what is wrong with Ada? Why don't more people use it?
> What
> do most people think of it? To me, it seems like a nice, concise, and
> safe language, but I haven't used it yet.
>[/color]

Hi Martin,

I'm just now starting to learn Ada, but I've been "looking at it" for quite
a while. I'd say the answer to your question is that no one uses it much,
because, no one uses it much.

My boss won't allow anything at work that isn't already being used by
everyone else. A lot of software choices are made for more or less those
reasons. As a corollary to this, it's impossible for us to hire anyone with
Ada programming experience, as an entry level programmer, and hiring someone
without experience in your software development systems of choice "just
isn't done". Since what we have access to are endless visual studio
programmers, that was used as an argument for what we should be using to
develop with.

The other reason I see is that it's not easily compatible with ActiveX, COM,
..net, and all the other interfacing standards that development add-ons are
sold for (in the Windows world). It's advantages of taking less effort, in
the long term, to maintain a given project, are offset by having to "roll
your own" everything in the beginning.


Just a newbie's outside view, but maybe you'll want to do what I'm doing:
jump in and begin preaching to the unconverted!

Chip

martinbishop wrote:[color=blue]
> I've never been scared of "non mainstream" languages, but I was
> wondering, what is wrong with Ada? Why don't more people use it?
> What
> do most people think of it? To me, it seems like a nice, concise, and
> safe language, but I haven't used it yet.[/color]

Nothing is wrong with Ada. It is a language for SW engineers. Since 98%
of SW developers are coders, not SW engineers, 98% prefer languages for
coders.

--
Jeff Carter
"Oh Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou
mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy."
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
24

>>>>> "martinbishop" == martinbishop <jedibebop@gmail.com> writes:

martinbishop> I've never been scared of "non mainstream"
martinbishop> languages, but I was wondering, what is wrong with
martinbishop> Ada? Why don't more people use it? What do most
martinbishop> people think of it? To me, it seems like a nice,
martinbishop> concise, and safe language, but I haven't used it
martinbishop> yet.

This was discussed recently.

See [url]http://groups.google.com.au/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/21960280f1d61e84/4f32ef40e541eff7[/url]
--
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>

On Apr 9, 8:25 pm, Brian May <b...@snoopy.apana.org.au> wrote:[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >>>>> "martinbishop" == martinbishop <jedibe...@gmail.com> writes:[/color][/color]
>
> martinbishop> I've never been scared of "non mainstream"
> martinbishop> languages, but I was wondering, what is wrong with
> martinbishop> Ada? Why don't more people use it? What do most
> martinbishop> people think of it? To me, it seems like a nice,
> martinbishop> concise, and safe language, but I haven't used it
> martinbishop> yet.
>
> This was discussed recently.
>
> Seehttp://groups.google.com.au/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/...
> --
> Brian May <b...@snoopy.apana.org.au>[/color]

Ahh, Thanks for that.

I've seen Ada "benchmarks", and it seems the compiler is great, and
the language seems really nice (verbose, but I kind of like that over
languages like Haskell and such). I figured most people didn't use it
for business or just general popularity reasons, but I thought there
might be some hidden "bad things" or something.

Thanks for all the replies

"Chip and Allie Orange":
[color=blue]
> The other reason I see is that it's not easily compatible with ActiveX, COM,
> .net, and all the other interfacing standards that development add-ons are
> sold for (in the Windows world). It's advantages of taking less effort, in
> the long term, to maintain a given project, are offset by having to "roll
> your own" everything in the beginning.[/color]

Did you look at GNATCOM ?
It provides automated interfacing with COM for the GNAT Ada compiler.
______________________________________________________________
Gautier -- [url]http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/index.htm[/url]
Ada programming -- [url]http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/gsoft.htm[/url]

NB: For a direct answer, e-mail address on the Web site!

> Ahh, Thanks for that.[color=blue]
>
> I've seen Ada "benchmarks", and it seems the compiler is great, and
> the language seems really nice (verbose, but I kind of like that over
> languages like Haskell and such). I figured most people didn't use it
> for business or just general popularity reasons, but I thought there
> might be some hidden "bad things" or something.[/color]

No bad thing, only bad marketing (at least in the early days)!
______________________________________________________________
Gautier -- [url]http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/index.htm[/url]
Ada programming -- [url]http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/gsoft.htm[/url]

NB: For a direct answer, e-mail address on the Web site!

Jeffrey R. Carter a écrit :
[color=blue]
> Nothing is wrong with Ada. It is a language for SW engineers. Since 98%
> of SW developers are coders, not SW engineers, 98% prefer languages for
> coders.[/color]

Agreed 100%. Another way to put it, let me ask : What's wrong with
developers ? Why do they like unsafe languages ? Why do they like
fighting a language all the time ? Why do they like unreadable code ?
Why do they like to play with a debugger ? Why do they like to play
Sherlock Holmes during hours to look for a bug ? Here are the real
questions to me, again nothing wrong with Ada to me !

Pascal.

--

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--| [url]http://www.obry.net[/url]
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595

Pascal Obry <pascal@obry.net> writes:
[color=blue]
> Jeffrey R. Carter a écrit :
>[color=green]
>> Nothing is wrong with Ada. It is a language for SW engineers. Since 98%
>> of SW developers are coders, not SW engineers, 98% prefer languages for
>> coders.[/color]
>
> Agreed 100%.[/color]

I don't. It's the attidute that is off-putting and gives software
engineering a bad name.
[color=blue]
> Another way to put it, let me ask : What's wrong with
> developers ? Why do they like unsafe languages ?[/color]

I think I already answered that. Still, on c.l.a, the myth persists
that "developers like unsafe languages". In actual reality it's the
other way round: For one reason or other -- as I explained often
enough, not related to technical merits of the languages in question
-- people like other languages, they just happen to be "unsafe".

(And even that might be questioned, since the big contenders at large
are (probably in that order) Excel, Php, Perl, Python and not only C
.... -- Excel and the 3 Ps are not unsafe in the same sense as C/C++
are).

[color=blue]
> Why do they like fighting a language all the time?[/color]

Well -- difficult to say: Why _are_ there language wars at c.l.a all
the time? Why does the Ada folks like to fight Java and C++? Somebody
here should be in the position to answer that question.
[color=blue]
> Why do they like unreadable code?[/color]
[color=blue]
> Why do they like to play with a debugger ?[/color]

Good question. That "real Ada software engineers" (like "real men")
never need a debugger might be the reason why gdb is so badly
integrated with Gnat. That's a thought.

BTW, the OP asked, I think, what is wrong with Ada. Just now I
remember: For one thing, the gdb <=> gnat integration.
[color=blue]
> Why do they like to play Sherlock Holmes during hours to look for a
> bug?[/color]

Strange. That would mean, Ada programs have no bugs. That is indeed
new to me. And believe me, the conceptual bugs (as opposed to type
system violations) are the bugs that are harder to discover and to
debug -- and for those a well integrated debugger is really useful
when they occur.
[color=blue]
> Here are the real
> questions to me, again nothing wrong with Ada to me ![/color]

Pascal, you're person which a proven track record and a good standing
in the Ada community (whereas I'm probably better known as a constant
complainer, but hope that I have my reasons). But THIS post is
absolute nonsense and not worthy to yourself.

I'm not so young myself but I dislike it, when people (metaphorically)
lean back in their rocking chairs and start (metaphorically)
complaining about the youth of today and how everything was better at
their time.

Regards -- Markus

"martinbishop" <jedibebop@gmail.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> On Apr 9, 8:25 pm, Brian May <b...@snoopy.apana.org.au> wrote:[color=green][color=darkred]
>> >>>>> "martinbishop" == martinbishop <jedibe...@gmail.com> writes:[/color]
>>
>> martinbishop> I've never been scared of "non mainstream"
>> martinbishop> languages, but I was wondering, what is wrong with
>> martinbishop> Ada? Why don't more people use it? What do most
>> martinbishop> people think of it? To me, it seems like a nice,
>> martinbishop> concise, and safe language, but I haven't used it
>> martinbishop> yet.
>>
>> This was discussed recently.
>>
>> Seehttp://groups.google.com.au/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/...
>> --
>> Brian May <b...@snoopy.apana.org.au>[/color]
>
> Ahh, Thanks for that.
>
> I've seen Ada "benchmarks", and it seems the compiler is great, and
> the language seems really nice (verbose, but I kind of like that over
> languages like Haskell and such). I figured most people didn't use it
> for business or just general popularity reasons, but I thought there
> might be some hidden "bad things" or something.[/color]

One "bad" thing (but that might not touch you) is availability of
compilers: There is a number of plain commercial compilers, some stuff
that is free as in beer (i.e. not avialable in 2 years from now) and
finally GNAT. GNAT comes in 2 versions: The FSF version which has a
run time with a linking exception and the AdaCore version which is
either available with a GPL runtime license or a (not quite so cheap)
paid license which has a linking excepetion.

That means, with the AdaCore "free" version you can only build GPLed
software, since the runtime is linked against the executable.

It is, I think, important to point that out, since here the situation
is different from what is custom with other "free" compilation systems
(where the use of a certain compiler rarely affects the license under
which you have to distribute your executables).

Problem with the FSF version (which would have the linikng exception)
is, that it is integrated in the GCC source tree now, but there are no
QC'd releases with GCC, so its not always in a good shape, the efforts
of various vounteers notwithstanding.

Also support for compiler versions on various platforms (Windows,
Linux, *BSD, VMS, ...) is varies: The Linux support is really good
(esp. on Debian), but often only old or unstable versions (Windows:
AFAIK you only get a old MingW version or 3.15p), or the AdaCore
version is available. For VMS it has been a long time anybody has
actually seen a free version.

(My research might not be up to date any more, so anybody here in
c.l.a. is welcome to correct me here).

One further thing you might consider, is, that AdaCore recently has
stripped the linking exception from a number of libraries (Florist,
GtkAda, PolyOrb) which they partly developed and traditionally
maintained. No community fork has happened at the time which preserved
the original more liberal licenses, so at the moment a number of
important libraries are only publicly available for GPL development.

This again is different from what you'll find in other language
communities. Most other languages (to take on example) have either no
GTK binding (which often is an indication that the language has only
few followers any more or is not used for user application
programming) or if it exists, it is under LGPL or similar. With Ada
the situation is different: GtkAda is under strict GPL and doesn't
even compile with other (Windows or Linux PC) Ada compilers
AFAIK. Other bindings are completely platform specific (like CLAW) and
proprietary. (Again that might not be a bad thing dependend on what
you intend to do with it).

You'll find similar situation for a number of other libraries.

There are free libraries, though, like Tash (a Ada-Tk binding) and a
number of excellent data structure and container libaries.

So to wrap it up: There is nothing wrong with the language per se, but
dependend on what you might want to do with it, the availability of
tools and libraries and the conditions to which they are available
might affect you or not.

Regards -- Markus