Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I use to be an Ada programmer.
I was a great language at the time (pre-OOP)
It had "strong type-ing" it had reusable "packages" it had "templates"!
It had other language support "pragmas"!
And when object orientation was all the rage it became "Ada 93"!

Why did Ada fail? What was the biggest argument against Ada?
... expensive compilers (oops I mean platforms)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Whatever happened to Ada?
by castaway (Parson) on May 15, 2003 at 09:14 UTC
    I've been wondering that too ;)
    When I was doing my degree (mid-nineties) we learnt Ada as our first and main language, as they were convinced it would be 'the next big langauge'. (We did a little C, FORTRAN and Miranda as well).. There were also a few jobs around at the time (this was in the UK, no idea about anywhere else..) As far as I remember its a spin-off of Pascal or Modula-2, and isn't that old, was invented by/supported by the MoD (or DoD?)
    One doesn't see many jobs for lots of less-popular languages around, due to actually not seeing many jobs at all, probably, and most employers wanting something mainstream, which is easier to get programmers for.

    Such is life.
    C. (Whatever this has to do with Perl)

    *confesses to having not done any Ada since Uni.. *

[reply]
Re: Whatever happened to Ada?
by vladb (Vicar) on May 14, 2003 at 20:40 UTC
    To begin, Ada has not failed. Nor did the punch cards. They all have played an integral part in the evolution of other programming languages that followed. I haven't spent a lot of my time digging up history on this subject, but I'd imagine Ada, being probably one of the earliest programming languages, has succeeded in as much as it essentially established the roots of modern computational science.

    You can learn considerably more about Ada here. I'm confidant that after a little bit of digging, you'll discover that Ada had very little to do with 'failure', afterall :)

    update: Well, what I meant by 'not failed' assertion is that Ada has left it's mark in the field of computing science. I'm sure even Larry himself might have borrowed the better parts of it when designing Perl.

    Now, when it comes to such things as web development, OOP, and modern systems development, I am not very knowledgable when it comes to Ada. From what little experience I have programming, I'm comfortable with Delphi, VB, VC++, Java, and Perl among a few other languages. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to learn much Ada. Coming to think of it, being a part of a larger community (of programmers), I might have contributed (at least a little) to the current 'pitiful' state of Ada by simply not picking up a book or two years back when I still had the time and energy to master new languages ;)

    update: Abigail-II, I stand corrected and even a bit embarrassed for the grossly inacurate statement; I must have been drinking extra strong coffee at the time of the writing of my first post (or thinking of both the legacy of Ada Byron's first 'programming language' and the naming of a modern language in her honour all at the same time) ;-)

    _____________________
    "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce
    the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

    Robert Wilensky, University of California

[reply]
      Ada the first programming language? Where did you get that idea from? Ada is relatively modern, designed in the second half of the 70's. It's younger than C.

      You are right that Larry borrowed things from Ada. Perhaps the best known is elsif.

      Abigail

[reply]

        You are right that Larry borrowed things from Ada. Perhaps the best known is elsif.

        Some of the other borrowed artifacts are package, underscores in numbers 10_000 and (I think) the rarely used apostrophe as a package separator, D'oh.

        --
        John.

[reply]
      What do you mean it hasn't failed?
      You show a web-site dedicated to Ada ... so what?
      I can find web-sites dedicated to Latin.
      You know ... the stereotype of dead languages.
      Try searching on dice or monster for Ada jobs.
      You will see that Ada is a dead language. Maybe except
      for PL/SQL except maybe that PL/SQL is a sibling of Ada
      Both being children of APL.

      I work at a place where the "technical lead" brags about translating code
      written in Ada to Visual C++ and then taking credit for implementing everthing
      else in PL/SQL!
[reply]
        A Latin Bore Writes

        "It's not dead - it's just resting..." Actually, Latin is being revived in many schools now, both as a means of teaching grammar, and as a common 'root' language, providing a good springboard for the learning of many others. Not sure about an Ada renaissance though - it always sounded a bit military to me...:)

        Cheers,
        Ben.

[reply]
Re: Whatever happened to Ada?
by perrin (Chancellor) on May 14, 2003 at 23:27 UTC
    I'm almost afraid to ask, but what does this have to do with Perl? It seems like the reasons for Ada's popularity, or lack of same, would be better discussed on Adamonks.
[reply]
Re: Whatever happened to Ada?
by hardburn (Abbot) on May 15, 2003 at 16:04 UTC

    Ada was made in the US DoD, where it is still used. The computers in modern US airplanes, helicopters, tanks, etc. run mostly on Ada code.

    ----
    I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
    -- Schemer

    Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

[reply]

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