I don't remember Ada to be better on these kinds of
usability metrics, but if it was, do you have a reference for
that? Are there any Ada users out there who can evaluate it on
the metrics?
I certainly agree with Ruven that the usability of a language has
a small (if any!) impact on whether it gets used, but this
doesn't mean it isn't useful to evaluate and try to improve the
usability of languages. So I think it is still interesting and
useful to follow through on our survey.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/langeval.html
If there are similar surveys already existing or published,
please send me a pointer!
The Natural Programming project is designing new languages for
specialized applications, like for kids and multimedia authoring,
where competition from C/C++/Java isn't a big issue. So any
knowledge we gain about usability will be relevant and important.
Anyway, the language which is popular seems to have about a 7
year window (Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java, ...) and so new
languages are always popping up. Certainly Java at least was
influenced by the conventional wisdom about what was problematic
about C++. Maybe we can insert some usability considerations
into whatever language becomes popular next? We certainly won't
if we don't try, or if we don't know what to say!
Brad A. Myers
Human Computer Interaction Institute
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891
(412) 268-5150
FAX: (412) 268-1266
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam
