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In the 80s, largely because compilers were expensive. I think it had a (smallish) second chance in 2001, when GNAT was put in the main GCC tree. By then plenty
by mjw1007 6y ago
In the 80s, largely because compilers were expensive.
I think it had a (smallish) second chance in 2001, when GNAT was put in the main GCC tree. By then plenty of people were disillusioned with C and C++, and I think it could have got momentum in a way similar to how Rust has (by appealing to programmers' pride in producing less-buggy programs).
But the Gnu Ada maintainer was also the person running Ada Core technologies (who sold the proprietary version of Gnat), and wasn't at all interested in making sure the free version worked out of the box on Linux distributions, or promoting Ada as a language for writing free software.
- jacobush 6y agoYes, I remember a tiny buzz around 2001 for it. I considered it but I couldn't find much information and then Python distracted me for a decade.
- Someone 6y agoCompilers also were relatively large, at least in part because the language is large. For example, it has generics, tasks and inter-task communication. C compilers did not need to have those in the 80s. That mattered at a time when many users wouldn’t have a hard disk.