ADA and Pascal are two of the most useless inventions Man has ever
wasted space on this planet with.  These languages are hard to learn,
have zero applications, and people who only know these languages can
only find jobs at Taco Bell!  Smart programmers spend their time
learning only C, C++, and Java in that order.

ADA and Pascal hard to learn he he.    Just how many programmers out there
have a handle on C++.    The whole package; STL, IOstreams, Class,
Templates - I could go on and on but the point is that there are only a
handful of people out there with a complete understanding of C++.    Then
there is the Question of how many of those are actually productive with it.
If C++ is that simple then we should be able to find VALIDATED compilers on
the market, far as I Know there is none out there.

The problem with ADA is that it is rejected by the hacker cult that started
out on C.    Mean while C & C++ have been rejected by anybody who has to
ship a product under tight deadlines and high quality expectations.   i.e.
anyone working for a corporation.

Dave

In article <345673af.1413...@news.mindspring.com>,

*** TROLL ALERT *** TROLL ALERT *** TROLL ALERT *** TROLL ALERT ***

*** IGNORE THE BAIT *** IGNORE THE BAIT *** IGNORE THE BAIT ***

   All the best, Timo

....................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi   Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance  ; University of Vaasa
mailto:t...@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/>  ; FIN-65101,  Finland

Spam foiling in effect.  My email filter autoresponder will return a
required email password to users not yet in the privileges database.

Hello everyone, I hate to say it but my sentiments are with Mr. Black to a
small degree.  My first programming class in college was in ADA and I found
it very difficult to learn because of the lack of documentation and help
aids for the language.  That  forced me to rely on my Professor for help
which unfortunately was like pulling teeth.  The lack of being able to
obtain outside sources from my local computer store ie : "ADA for Dummies"
left me with a feeling of complete frustration while I spent the semester
copying and reediting code from my fellow struggling classmates in order to
pass the course.
However, struggling with ADA did give me an appreciation for the process of
writing source code, and I have found that the fundamentals that I learned
with ADA are applicable to me as I learn C++.  <-- By the way this time I am
writing my own code),

Shombe, I feel your pain.  I'm embroiled in a Comparative Programming
Language class where we have to program in Ada, and the thing is so
impossible, I'm lucky to even get it to compile, never mind Constraint
Errors.  And why bother sweating over a language that nobody uses!?
At least I know C++, and I can pick up Java relatively easily.
Knowing Ada and Pascal are almost as useful as knowing outer space
basket weaving.

Then why do the want ads for C, C++ programmers could stretch from
here to the moon, while Ada/Pascal programmers are nonexistent?  Like
I said, if you program in Ada or Pascal, your best job is going to be
taking orders at Red Lobster.

Regards,
Xu Yifeng

   This has almost nothing to do with the "ease of learning" either
language (and I feel C/C++ is much harder to do so than Pascal), but by
some other factors:
  1. The portability issue.  C/C++ are basically portable across
platforms, and this is an extremely important issue to corporate
thinking.  It's more important to the executives/decision makers of most
companies that their key applications can be moved to other vendor's
hardware when financial issues force such switches, than to have
implementation languages which their programmers like and find easy to
learn.
  2. Pascal and Ada (which is often called a highly enriched Pascal)
weren't designed as application development vehicles - whereas C/C++
were.  Pascal was invented as a teaching tool for structured and module
problem solving, to show and overcome the faults of weakly typed and
inherently undisciplined coding languages of the past (e.g. COBOL,
ForTran, BASIC, assembler, etc.).  There was almost no thought given to
I/o, databases, strings, and performance issues with Wirth's Pascal, and
he designed the language to teach the initial concepts of program
correctness, and modular design.  It wasn't until Borland marketed Turbo
Pascal (which they didn't initially write) that Pascal became a real
implementation tool, instead of the "teaching toy" it really was.  
However, Pascal is almost non-existent in the business environment,
regardless of how many hobbiests and PC programmers make effective use of
it....sigh
   Ada, OTOH, was designed for implementation of secure and fail-safe
systems for the Government.  It was based on Pascal concepts (very strong
typing, modularity, consistency, etc.), but was taken much farther than
was useful to the general world.  Learning Ada should be considered an
educational experience, at best, because no one uses it.  And I agree
it's very hard to learn and work with, even coming from a Pascal
background.  Nonetheless, Ada provides some interesting and useful things
for any serious programmer to think about and use in his/her work.

In article <MPG.ec1256665b68f1b989...@news.primenet.com>,

Next door to me, a prominent company is developing an air traffic control
system using Ada in a joint venture with other companies.
--
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
        -- Blair P. Houghton

Have you ever considered that *programming* is difficult?  Whether you
learn
in Ada or C++, there is a learning curve to climb.  Once you have
understood
the principles then any language becomes easier to learn.  You might
very well
have learnt the languages the other way round, in which case you would
be
on the opposite side of this flame-fest :-)

--
+------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Name:   Nat Pryce MEng ACGI              | Dept. of Computing, |
| Email:  n...@doc.ic.ac.uk                 | Imperial College,   |
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+------------------------------------------+---------------------+

In article <345673af.1413...@news.mindspring.com>,

What's more likely is not that you are retarded, but that you have never tried
learning Pascal or writing a program in it. It's even more likely that you are
too young to remember Pascal.

Ada is used in all kinds of embedded systems and military applications. I know
at least one huge air traffic control system that is developed in Ada.
--
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
        -- Blair P. Houghton

In article <636m6l$...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Shombe Kroll"

So why isn't Ada in more widespread use?  Ada compilers, being somewhat
larger and more complex than C compilers, are likewise more expensive.  Ada
was never marketed toward business -- it was designed for a specific
problem domain, and some of the more esoteric features were not perceived
to be immediately valuable (unfortunately -- hell, the exception handling
mechanism *alone* could simplify things by orders of magnitude).  The Ada
development environment typically requires more horsepower than the C
development environment -- up until very recently, *serious* Ada
development required workstation-class machines.

But the *biggest* reason C is in such demand?  Inertia.  People started
using C for no other reason than it was available and it was cheap and you
could develop C code on an AT-class machine.  It certainly wasn't for
technical superiority.  Over the past twenty years, a *lot* of code has
been written in C, so you need a lot of developers familiar with C to
maintain it, and since all they know is C, all new development is done in
C, etc., etc., etc.  

Suddenly, along comes C++, and all that C experience gets leveraged into
what appears to be a fully buzzword-compliant OOL that, in reality, falls
short of what an OOL could and should be.  Ada certainly isn't the be-all
and end-all of OOP, but I find it a lot easier to deal with than C++.

--
John Bode
one grumpy code monkey

"Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale" -- Strange Days

To email me directly, remove the 'nospam.' from my address.

I like Java, Pascal and Eiffel.

Just my two cents...

--

Erik Alapaeae
email: NOSPAM_f93-...@sm.luth.se