Post #1650324
2026-04-17 15:42 UTC
@MartyFouts
I think that's unfair ?
Everybody charged DoD 10x "because of Ada" - simply because they could get away with it, provided Ada didn't become mainstream.
The perverse incentives of military procurement is not in any way a relevant factor, when Judging a programming language, as programing language.
The point about everybody else converging on where they could have started 45 years ago is IMO, totally fair.
Replies (1)
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@MartyFouts@mastodon.online 2026-04-17 18:31
@bsdphk Ada was entirely the result of DOD procurement, intended to solve a DOD problem. Dijkstra, rightly, criticized the design process and the final language and his writing on the subject should be required reading. Ada suffered from the same problem PL/1 did and was almost immediately fragmented into the infamous “profile” subsets that resulted in it failing to meet DOD requirements. It was not a good language to start from, revisionist views notwithstanding.