Why require that companies use a specific programming language instead of requiring that the end product is good?

> And the F35 and America's combat readiness would be in a better place today with Ada instead of C++.

What is the evidence for this? Companies selling Ada products would almost certainly agree, since they have a horse in the race. Ada does not automatically lead to better, more robust, safer or fully correct software.

Your line of argument is dangerous and dishonest, as real life regrettably shows.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88

> The failure has become known as one of the most infamous and expensive software bugs in history.[2] The failure resulted in a loss of more than US$370 million.[3]

> The launch failure brought the high risks associated with complex computing systems to the attention of the general public, politicians, and executives, resulting in increased support for research on ensuring the reliability of safety-critical systems. The subsequent automated analysis of the Ariane code (written in Ada) was the first example of large-scale static code analysis by abstract interpretation.[9]

▲

fauigerzigerk 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Why require that companies use a specific programming language instead of requiring that the end product is good?

I can think of two reasons. First, achieving the same level of correctness could be cheaper using a better language. And second, you have to assume that your testing is not 100% correct and complete either. I think starting from a better baseline can only be helpful.

That said, I have never used formal verification tools for C or C++. Maybe they make up for the deficiencies of the language.

▲

skepti2 2 days ago | parent [-]

How do you define a better programming language, how do you judge whether one programming language is better than another, and how do you prevent corruption and cartels from taking over?

If Ada was "better" than C++, why did Ada not perform much better than C++, both in regards to safety and correctness (Ariane 5), and commercially regarding its niche and also generally? Lots of companies out there could have gotten a great competitive edge with a "better" programming language. Why did the free market not pick Ada?

You could then argue that C++ had free compilers, but that should have been counter-weighed somewhat by the Ada mandate. Why did businesses not pick up Ada?

Rust is much more popular than Ada, at least outside Ada's niche. Some of that is organic, for instance arguably due to Rust's nice pattern matching and modules and crates. And some of that is inorganic, like how Rust evangelists through force, threats[0], harassment[1] and organized and paid media spam force Rust.

I also tried Ada some time ago, trying to write a tiny example, and it seemed worse than C++ in some regards. Though I only spent a few hours or so on it.

[0]: https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411#d...

[1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/6/1292

> Technical patches and discussions matter. Social media brigading - no than\k you.

> Linus

https://archive.md/uLiWX

https://archive.md/rESxe

	▲	fauigerzigerk 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		>How do you define a better programming language A language that makes avoiding certain important classes of defects easier and more productive. >how do you judge whether one programming language is better than another Analytically, i.e. by explaining and proving how these classes of bugs can be avoided. I don't find empirical studies on this subject particularly useful. There are too many moving parts in software projects. The quality of the team and its working environment probably dominates everything else. And these studies rarely take productivity and cost into consideration.