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From: Ludovic Brenta on 5 Feb 2007 11:54
Remember my tirade [1] about how some languages are the "zen masters"
of programming? I quickly looked at the results of Debian's Popularity
Contest [2], which ranks packages in Debian according to their
popularity. (This ranking helps choose which CD-ROM or DVD-ROM each
package ships on. There are currently 23 CD-ROMs or 3 DVD-ROMs for
i386 alone.)

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/msg/27adfc53e2cb4ac1
[2] http://popcon.debian.org

I only looked at the "zen master" languages and at the "votes" column
in the popularity contest results. Here is what I found:

Language Package Votes
---------------------------
Ada gnat 98
Pascal fp-compiler 65
Pascal gpc 55
Eiffel smarteiffel 20
Modula-2 m2c 4
Oberon oo2c 1

Granted, the two Pascal compilers combined beat gnat, but just look at
the graph on [3] for the evolution since 2004. Something's happening.

[3] http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?
packages=fp-compiler%2C+gnat%2C
+gpc&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&beenhere=1

Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series of
articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The December
issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a mention of
"the next article"...

--
Ludovic Brenta.

From: Yves Bailly on 5 Feb 2007 12:54
Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> Remember my tirade [1] about how some languages are the "zen masters"
> of programming? I quickly looked at the results of Debian's Popularity
> Contest [2], which ranks packages in Debian according to their
> [...]
> Granted, the two Pascal compilers combined beat gnat, but just look at
> the graph on [3] for the evolution since 2004. Something's happening.

It seems we're many to work hard to promote Ada in some way or another,
so in the long run there's hope ;-)

> Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series of
> articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The December
> issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a mention of
> "the next article"...

Thanks for noting them :-) I hope you found them valuable enough, you
most probably didn't learn anything, but hopefully some might "see the
light". I can say that I received numerous feedback for those articles
(asking for source code, more details, etc.), already more than for
my serie on Qt (C++, 24 on Qt3, 8 on Qt4). So yes, it seems that Ada
is rather popular after all.

If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know.

Regards,

--
(o< | Yves Bailly : http://kafka-fr.net | -o)
//\ | Linux Dijon : http://www.coagul.org | //\
\_/ | | \_/`
From: Jeffrey R. Carter on 5 Feb 2007 13:24
Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>
> Language Package Votes
> ---------------------------
> Ada gnat 98

This is an unidentified version, presumably the default. There's also

gnat-4.1 97
gnat-3.3 5
gnat-3.4 2
gnat-3.2 1
gnat-4.0 1

How do they fit into this?

--
Jeff Carter
"Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!"
Monty Python's Flying Circus
53
From: Ludovic Brenta on 5 Feb 2007 15:23
Jeffrey R. Carter writes:
> Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>>
>> Language Package Votes
>> ---------------------------
>> Ada gnat 98
>
> This is an unidentified version, presumably the default. There's also
>
> gnat-4.1 97
> gnat-3.3 5
> gnat-3.4 2
> gnat-3.2 1
> gnat-4.0 1
>
> How do they fit into this?

Indeed, gnat is the default, per Debian Policy for Ada. In Sarge,
that was gnat 3.15p but now in Etch, it is almost empty and provides
just one symbolic link: /usr/bin/gnatgcc -> gcc-4.1. Most importantly
it depends on the actual compiler package, gnat-4.1.

The other versions (3.3 .. 4.0) are older and no longer provided in
Debian. They were never supported anyway.

--
Ludovic Brenta.
From: Ludovic Brenta on 5 Feb 2007 15:28
Yves Bailly writes:
[Ada articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France]
> I can say that I received numerous feedback for those articles
> (asking for source code, more details, etc.), already more than for
> my serie on Qt (C++, 24 on Qt3, 8 on Qt4). So yes, it seems that Ada
> is rather popular after all.

I'm glad to hear that.

> If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know.

Just one: they're really good. I bought all issues of GMLF where they
appear, except for Jan and Feb 2007 because I couldn't find them in
Brussels. Keep up the good work!

At a local GNU/Linux copy party, I once introduced Ada to two students
in CS, and noted that "unfortunately Ada is not a fashionable
language". One of the students said: "oh yes, it is fashionable, what
with all these articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France!"

I hope you find more to say about Ada in future articles. It seems
you've now covered pretty much everything about the language, but
maybe (just a suggestion) you might like to extend the series with Toy
Lovelace, Qt4Ada or GtkAda?

--
Ludovic Brenta.
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