Tried Ada? Yeah Yeah, another Language Religious War Post, Right? Not as such: look at the results of the research. There's religion, and then there's science. Ada's not perfect, just the best of a bad bunch. Some facts: Compilers are free (GNAT) Can generate Java Bytecode (need another free tool to do this though) Stable - 2 versions (83,95) over the last 17 years AND they're both ISO standardised. Yes, code generated for 1 compiler/platform often needs 0 changes to run on another. Even if the original is Ada-83 and the new one Ada-95. I've seen this with 17,000 line add-ons developed on a PC/Doze 3.11 box in another country, ported to and integrated on VAX/VMS, then finally on an embedded system using yet another compiler. (Ok, 3 lines needed changing, bugs caught in the integration). Works just as well for smaller projects too. Most of the functionality of Lint etc is already in the language, no need for expensive tools. Can do anything that Java can do (using standrad libraries), plus it has generics (templates) Basis for Oracle's PL/SQL And finally the US DoD is no longer mandating its use, so we can get rid of the Military Industrial Complex stigma. The same process generated the Internet and Unix BTW, which both have military roots (US DoD funded development). Boeing, Airbus, Tupolev etc use it in all their new airliners (for reliability) and all the (few) experiments have shown development in Ada is cheaper over the lifecycle than C++ anyway. IMHO For Military Big Bux stuff where the Weaponmakers make $$$ out of fixing bugs, they avoid it like the plague, too reliable. (hence the successful pressure by the Beltway Bandits for the DoD to delete the mandate). Downsides: We've had reliable, strongly-typed, OO languages for nearly 20 years now. But quality costs time, you can ship a buggy product that will never be fixable quicker using Wizards and VB (or even C)than a quality one. While we're willing to put up with Blue Screens of Death every day and pay 10% less and not have to wait an additional week, then we'll continue to get C#, VB, Outlook and Worms. for (int i=kBIGARRAYFIRSTi;i Ting described how a Silicon Graphics Ada star programmed > a voice recognition application in 4 1/2 days that used only > 3 percent of the CPU, while the C++ version took two months > and consumed 17 percent of the CPU.
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Tried Ada? Yeah Yeah, another Language Religious War Post, Right? Not as such: look at the results of the research. There's religion, and then there's science. Ada's not perfect, just the best of a bad bunch. Some facts: Compilers are free (GNAT) Can generate Java Bytecode (need another free tool to do this though) Stable - 2 versions (83,95) over the last 17 years AND they're both ISO standardised. Yes, code generated for 1 compiler/platform often needs 0 changes to run on another. Even if the original is Ada-83 and the new one Ada-95. I've seen this with 17,000 line add-ons developed on a PC/Doze 3.11 box in another country, ported to and integrated on VAX/VMS, then finally on an embedded system using yet another compiler. (Ok, 3 lines needed changing, bugs caught in the integration). Works just as well for smaller projects too. Most of the functionality of Lint etc is already in the language, no need for expensive tools. Can do anything that Java can do (using standrad libraries), plus it has generics (templates) Basis for Oracle's PL/SQL And finally the US DoD is no longer mandating its use, so we can get rid of the Military Industrial Complex stigma. The same process generated the Internet and Unix BTW, which both have military roots (US DoD funded development). Boeing, Airbus, Tupolev etc use it in all their new airliners (for reliability) and all the (few) experiments have shown development in Ada is cheaper over the lifecycle than C++ anyway. IMHO For Military Big Bux stuff where the Weaponmakers make $$$ out of fixing bugs, they avoid it like the plague, too reliable. (hence the successful pressure by the Beltway Bandits for the DoD to delete the mandate). Downsides: We've had reliable, strongly-typed, OO languages for nearly 20 years now. But quality costs time, you can ship a buggy product that will never be fixable quicker using Wizards and VB (or even C)than a quality one. While we're willing to put up with Blue Screens of Death every day and pay 10% less and not have to wait an additional week, then we'll continue to get C#, VB, Outlook and Worms. for (int i=kBIGARRAYFIRSTi;i Ting described how a Silicon Graphics Ada star programmed > a voice recognition application in 4 1/2 days that used only > 3 percent of the CPU, while the C++ version took two months > and consumed 17 percent of the CPU.