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

>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.