Re: Why don't large companies use Ada?

In article <3aagtj$h5g_at_uuneo.neosoft.com>, Steven Whatley <swhatle_at_starbase.neosoft.com> wrote:
>I have done a lot of Ada development. Personally, I liked ada except for
>the package Text_Io. I hated Text_Io! Ada has the reputation of expencive
>complilers, huge executables, hogs system resources, and "its only for the
>government to use." (i.e. NASA, DoD, etc.)
>
That was then, this is now. Times have changed. If you have such a compiler, call your vendor. Better yet, look around at other vendors. They're out there.

>Also, Ada requires a extensive development environment to take advantage of
>all of its features. (i.e. CASE tool, a language specific editor, a library
>manager, a configuration management/version control system, etc.)
>
Yeah. Right. And "serious" development in other languages only need vi.

Not!

FYI, I do lots of "Small" Ada work at home using only vi and RCS. I don't need no steenkin' CASE tools or LSE. :-)

>Some people associate Ada with the Rational Ada development system. It is a
>very nice and integrated environment. But, it cost over a $100,100 for a
>system that can only be used by twelve people. Six to eight simultaneous
>users was optimal. And don't forget the keyboard! I have never seen so
>many keys plus the number of ESC+control+shift+alt+meta+keypress
>combinations! Personally, I did not mind that but, it is a very scary
>sight. The apollo Rational emulator software was very nice.
>
Yup, and IBM sells these 8088 computers with monochrome monitors, and Apple sells this newfangled computer called the Apple IIc. Get with it, Rational won't even sell you an R-1000 anymore. Their new Ada development environment (and rumor has it soon to be available for C/C++), called Apex, is priced somewhere around the same cost as Centerline's product. It's available for a variety of platforms: Sun, HP, IBM RS6000, etc. It's a very slick and "open" environment. Extremely "Unix-friendly".

>A lot of people did not like the strict type checking. They felt like it
>was very combersome and too restrictive.
>
Well, most of that is diminished with the new version of Ada. The real issue is that, if you're writing software that must be reliable, Ada is the best OO language to choose (of course, this open's up the whole language-flamefest again).

>I have not used Ada 9x so, it may have relieved a lot the problems with
>Ada 83. I would like to see Ada make a comeback but its reputation as
>a dinosuar is probably to strong to allow it.
>
Only by posting such mythical rumors does it perpetuate. Free your mind -- our lady Ada has finally matured. It's definitely worth another look.

"Try it again for the first time", as I'm so fond of saying.

The free GNU gcc-based Ada 94 compiler is available at cs.nyu.edu. Look under /pub/gnat. It's available for just about every OS that gcc is available on, including a version that works under DOS.

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