Fashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used.

Mandator y adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently, 32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable

and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to: provideFashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used. M andatory adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently, 32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con

tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to: provideFashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used. M andatory adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently, 32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming

languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to: provideFashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used. M andatory adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently, 32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and

get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to: provideFashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used. M andatory adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently,

32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to: provideFashion plays a role in determining which languages become widely used. M andatory adoption by a powerful government agency (as in the case of Ada) also obviously affects adoption. The selection of a programming language for a particular project will be influenced by many factors not directly related to the programming language itself. For example, many organizations have a substantial investment in a particular progra mming language. Over a period of time, hundreds of thousands of lines of code may have

been developed and the programming staff will have built up considerable expertise wi th the language. In such a situation, there is often considerable resistance to change even if a superior language is available. There are other factors which can influence programming language selection. The software developer may be bound by a contract which actually specifies the imple mentation language. Decisions by the US government to support Cobol and, more recently, 32.3 The world of programming languages 32.3 The world of programming languages 393 Ada considerably influenced the acceptance of those languages. Support from supp liers of major software components, such as language compilers and database management sy stems, will influence language selection for many developers. If an apparent bug appear s in a compiler, for example, they need to know that they can pick up the telephon e and get the supplier to help them. Similarly, the availability of software tools suc h as languagesensitive editors, debugging systems and project management tools may favor one programming language over another. The provision of integrated software developm ent environments which combine the programming language with a set of development tools, such as debuggers, browsers and version control tools, has an influence o n language selection. There can be little doubt that news of the death of programming and programming languages has been greatly exaggerated. Software will continue to be written in languages like those we know for the foreseeable future. Old languages, like Fortran and Cobol, will not go away because of the millions of lines of legacy software writ ten in these languages which will continue to need maintenance. As ever, new programmin g languages will continue to emerge. This is an important approach to constructing software that has been repeatedly addressed in this book. The argument goes like this: software developers are con tinually reinventing the wheel. Instead of writing software from scratch over and over ag ain, they should emulate people like computer hardware designers. Hardware designers make heavy use of catalogs that describe hundreds of off-the-shelf components. A ll that the designer has to do is to select components and collect them together to carr y out the required purpose. The proponents of reuse, therefore, envisage comprehensive libraries of reliable and well-documented software components from which developers can select. The contro versy starts with the choice of mechanism for representing the components in the library. Two main contenders are on offer: libraries of filters like those in Unix libraries of classes provided in object-oriented systems, such as Smalltalk, Vis ual Basic .Net, C++, C# or Java. Components need to:

provide