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I feel someone asserting this is the first time there's been an impetus coming from the government to move away from C and C++ must be entirely unfamiliar with
by justin66 3y ago
I feel someone asserting this is the first time there's been an impetus coming from the government to move away from C and C++ must be entirely unfamiliar with the history of Ada.
- steveklabnik 3y agoWhile they are similar, they are different: the move towards Ada was scoped purely at the Department of Defense. This situation is one where the government is also trying to work with and encourage practices in general industry.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoI wonder how well that's going to work out. The software industry isn't exactly noted for taking technical advice from the White House...
- steveklabnik 3y agoIn the request for comments before this was published, there was broad support from wide swaths of industry. Many organizations you've heard of are on board. Or at least, the public position of their companies are, I don't know how well that translates to the rank and file. I have to write up a post about this...
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoPlease post it here when you do. I'd love to read it.
- justin66 3y agoIn this case the problem's a little harder than that. The advice is good advice that the industry is already happy to give to itself, but less happy to actually apply when there's some cost or education required.
- jimberlage 3y agoRust has an industry and a hobbyist ecosystem, whereas I’m not sure if Ada ever had the hobbyists on board.
- guenthert 3y agoIt's perhaps a small community, but there sure are hobbyists using Ada (it's not a bad choice of a language for certain applications). With GNAT, Ada is quite accessible even. See, e.g. https://pico-doc.synack.me/ https://pico-doc.synack.me/
- pjmlp 3y agoOnly after GNAT came to be, note that besides Ada Core, there are other six vendors still in business, with the typical defence contract prices, hardly easy to get hobbists that way.
- pjmlp 3y agoPeople using Ada's failure are unfamiliar with the history of Ada, otherwise they would acknowledge that the reasons that it did not took off outside DoD weren't at all technical related, rather the hardware requirements (Rational started as a Ada Machine company), the price of the compilers, not being part of the UNIX SDK on the UNIX vendors that Ada compilers (it was an additional expense), the hacker culture against bondage languages (as usually discussed on Usenet),....