Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?


Charles D Hixson <charleshixsn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

goes on. I, personally, think that one factor IS the lack of a
standard garbage collector. Related to this is the awkwardness of
dealing with strings of varying lengths.

Actually that is rather good compared to C or C++. The different
string package s make it possible to often use stack allocated storage
only or get the comfort of unbounded strings. After a while I really
started to like this.

There are many features which aren't significant after you've learned
how to work your way around them that can be sizeable blockages at the
start.

Remember that at the start, Ada was competing solely against C. C++
barely existed, and what did exist didn't bear that much resemblance
to what we now call C++. (I used to use C++ rather than C solely
because of the typed constants.) At that point C had to be cut down
to compile on a micro-computer. Look up BSD C or Lifeboat C. These
were SUBSETS of C, but they could be used, and they could call
themselves C.


Yes. That is the availability issue again. I personally would have
wished that there where a suitable subset of Ada (without tasking)
that could be linked with C (or FORTRAN). That would have helped to
survive in a mixed environment a furthered slow migration from an
existing code base.

(Once you started using them, you became well aware
that they were subsets...works in progress as it were.)

Ada subsets couldn't use the name Ada. Janus Ada couldn't call
itself Ada for quite awhile. And even Janus Ada couldn't run on
most CP/M machines. Too resource intensive. I bought an Apple ][
to run UCSD Pascal, and was so disappointed that I saved up and
installed a CP/M card so that I could run C. Ada wasn't a
possibility. (I never seriously considered Basic. It was too
non-portable. If I wanted non-portable, I'd go for assembler.)


Ada was HUGE and C++ was only a slight bit larger than C. (The times
they DO change!) At that time I was a PL/I programmer on a mainframe,
and Ada had a reputation that caused me to both lust after it, and to
fear it's complexities. Actually, however, it was never a realistic
possibility. I couldn't run it on my home machine, and work sure
wasn't going to pay the have the service bureau install it. So I
dreamed about it...and Algol68, and Snobol, and IPL, and APL, and
LISP...and didn't take any of those dreams seriously. But of those
only Ada and Algol were frightening as well as lust provoking.

:-) Nice account.

Regards -- Markus

.

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