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by kevlar700 489 days ago
Predicates are great but most of the good stuff including privacy, proper subtyping and abstract data types came with Ada 83. Rust can't hold a candle even to Ada 83 imo.
1 comments

Ada has practically no mindshare, Rust does. Just like say, Scala, things can be technically 'good', but without adoption it isn't going to get the attention and visibility to compete with everything that does.
Enough mindshare to keep 7 compiler vendors in business.

How many would pay for a Rust compiler?

We're talking about mindshare, not commercial incentives. There are plenty of things sold to small groups of buyers with no significant mindshare. Mindshare does not equal commercial viability or sales numbers.

As for who would pay for a Rust compiler: probably not a whole lot of people unless that compiler has something special the offer that the normal compiler does not.

The same goes for a C compiler, there are Intel compilers that are supposed to be 'better', but as it turns out, in most cases not 'better' enough for people to pay for them. But even then, I would not be surprised if more people pay for the ICC than for Ada (but I would also not be surprised if the Ada compiler sales rack up more money than the ICC sales).

I agree there's probably far more commercial support than Rust, but:

- Ada is only a small part of what Green Hills offers.

- PTC mostly isn't even a development tools company, their main products are PLM and CAD (WindChill and Creo).

- I think RR is a one-man company.

PTC still maintain PERC (for some definition of 'maintain'). At least I hope so.