3 ms·

This is one of those post where I'm happy to see so much people disagreeing, except I'm not sure we're disagreeing. Your key sentence is: ... except in the mos

This is one of those post where I'm happy to see so much people disagreeing, except I'm not sure we're disagreeing. Your key sentence is: ... except in the most superficial sense... That is exactly the barrier Ada needs to overcome. If people take the time to really look at Ada,they'd see its actually quite reasonable. But if someone asks what language to learn, they start with shortening the almost infinite list of languages to something worth looking at. This filtering process happens in the crudest possible way, based more on feelings and hearsay than on verified facts: How big is the ecosystem, how will other people look at my code, ... This proces delivers, say, about 10 to 20 languages worth actually spending time looking at them. That's the hurdle Ada has to jump. This is a marketing problem. If you look at rust, the work done by Mozilla and people like e.g. Steve Klabnik to put the language on the map is enourmously valuable. With code examples, blog post, fixing real world pain points, answering questions, .... It took years but they did it. If Ada had a group of people and a bigname organization, all doing this work, it would be a completely different story.

lolinder 5y ago
Agreed, but the problem you're describing has nothing to do with looking like COBOL. If we're talking superficial syntax, my first thought was that it looks like Ruby but with C++-style interface/implementation separation. The syntax is odd, but not at all unpleasant. For me, my hurdles were: * First, I thought that Ada was exclusively a proprietary language. * Then, I got confused about whether I can use GNAT Community and not publish it under the GPL (https://www.adacore.com/get-started https://www.adacore.com/get-started says I must). * Finally I found FSF GNAT (http://www.getadanow.com/ http://www.getadanow.com/), so it turns out there is a standard-licensed language I can use. At this point I'm finally ready to actually try Ada, and just haven't started a project that seemed like a good fit. But the bulk of my barrier to entry was licensing questions, not syntax.
- pyjarrett 5y ago
  See https://pyjarrett.github.io/programming-with-ada/clearing-the-air.html https://pyjarrett.github.io/programming-with-ada/clearing-th...
  - lolinder 5y ago
    Yep! This is the tutorial that finally cleared everything up for me. I'd previously found AdaCore.com, which was where I learned about the Community edition but not the FSF GNAT.
- Lucretia9 5y ago
  You can use any version of gnat to build this - https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada
Jtsummers 5y ago
I'm disagreeing with the assertion that Ada looks like COBOL. You may or may not agree with that statement, but you made it. > This filtering process happens in the crudest possible way, based more on feelings and hearsay than on verified facts And that's why people should stop making statements like: >>> Ada, unfortunately, looks cobol-like, so someone who knows nothing automatically assumes a ton of bureaucracy. Run away if you want work done. Without much stronger caveats to clarify that it is not a correct impression. Without a strong statement clarifying that it's only an impression (based on the most superficial of analyses) and not the reality, people will read comments like yours (and others in threads like this one) and never go any further to realize that they're false, and end up repeating them. In an Ada thread just a few weeks back someone wrote COBOL-ish code claiming it was Ada code. It was a math-y example like the GCD code above, and clearly wouldn't work if you had even a passing familiarity with Ada. But it was written in such strong terms that it gave the impression the author was competent when they were really ignorant. > If you look at rust, the work done by Mozilla and people like e.g. Steve Klabnik to put the language on the map is enourmously valuable. With code examples, blog post, fixing real world pain points, answering questions, .... It took years but they did it. If Ada had a group of people and a bigname organization, all doing this work, it would be a completely different story. AdaCore has actually done a lot of the same. http://learn.adacore.com http://learn.adacore.com - really good learning resources, freely available https://blog.adacore.com https://blog.adacore.com - active blog describing various Ada-based projects as well as developments in SPARK and Ada. And as an answer to things like Cargo there's now Alire: https://alire.ada.dev https://alire.ada.dev Both comp.lang.ada and r/ada are pretty active.
Lucretia9 5y ago
> That is exactly the barrier Ada needs to overcome No, this is the barrier people need to overcome. Readable is good.

lolinder 5y ago

Agreed, but the problem you're describing has nothing to do with looking like COBOL. If we're talking superficial syntax, my first thought was that it looks like Ruby but with C++-style interface/implementation separation. The syntax is odd, but not at all unpleasant. For me, my hurdles were: * First, I thought that Ada was exclusively a proprietary language. * Then, I got confused about whether I can use GNAT Community and not publish it under the GPL (https://www.adacore.com/get-started https://www.adacore.com/get-started says I must). * Finally I found FSF GNAT (http://www.getadanow.com/ http://www.getadanow.com/), so it turns out there is a standard-licensed language I can use. At this point I'm finally ready to actually try Ada, and just haven't started a project that seemed like a good fit. But the bulk of my barrier to entry was licensing questions, not syntax.

pyjarrett 5y ago
See https://pyjarrett.github.io/programming-with-ada/clearing-the-air.html https://pyjarrett.github.io/programming-with-ada/clearing-th...
- lolinder 5y ago
  Yep! This is the tutorial that finally cleared everything up for me. I'd previously found AdaCore.com, which was where I learned about the Community edition but not the FSF GNAT.
Lucretia9 5y ago
You can use any version of gnat to build this - https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada https://github.com/Lucretia/sdlada

Jtsummers 5y ago

I'm disagreeing with the assertion that Ada looks like COBOL. You may or may not agree with that statement, but you made it. > This filtering process happens in the crudest possible way, based more on feelings and hearsay than on verified facts And that's why people should stop making statements like: >>> Ada, unfortunately, looks cobol-like, so someone who knows nothing automatically assumes a ton of bureaucracy. Run away if you want work done. Without much stronger caveats to clarify that it is not a correct impression. Without a strong statement clarifying that it's only an impression (based on the most superficial of analyses) and not the reality, people will read comments like yours (and others in threads like this one) and never go any further to realize that they're false, and end up repeating them. In an Ada thread just a few weeks back someone wrote COBOL-ish code claiming it was Ada code. It was a math-y example like the GCD code above, and clearly wouldn't work if you had even a passing familiarity with Ada. But it was written in such strong terms that it gave the impression the author was competent when they were really ignorant. > If you look at rust, the work done by Mozilla and people like e.g. Steve Klabnik to put the language on the map is enourmously valuable. With code examples, blog post, fixing real world pain points, answering questions, .... It took years but they did it. If Ada had a group of people and a bigname organization, all doing this work, it would be a completely different story. AdaCore has actually done a lot of the same. http://learn.adacore.com http://learn.adacore.com - really good learning resources, freely available https://blog.adacore.com https://blog.adacore.com - active blog describing various Ada-based projects as well as developments in SPARK and Ada. And as an answer to things like Cargo there's now Alire: https://alire.ada.dev https://alire.ada.dev Both comp.lang.ada and r/ada are pretty active.

Lucretia9 5y ago

> That is exactly the barrier Ada needs to overcome No, this is the barrier people need to overcome. Readable is good.