Re: Current status of Ada?

[lou <louisaturk@bible-way.org>]

>The fact that Ada compiler vendors charged outragesous prices
> for
> their compilers helped to discourage commercial organizations from using Ada:
> COBOL, C, C, Pascal, were more affordable.
> Richard Riehle

This is my very first day on this newsgroup, and I come here after
about a month of frustration trying to learn more about Ada.
As a newcomer, I think I can give an important insight as to what
needs to be done to draw more people into using Ada. First,
however, I need to say that I found Ada because I was looking for a
language that supports unicode. It seems that Ada is one of
very few languages that fully supports unicode. Is that true? If so,
that is a point that needs to be emphasized. After reading
some of the articles on the AdaCore website, I became very interested
in Ada. What has impressed me about Ada: (a) Safety and
reliability. I'm presently using two applications that have very
elegant designs (from a user interface point of view), but are
coded in inferior languages, and as a result have very serious memory
leaks which their authors seem unable to find. These are not
flight system control applications, but they are critical for me to
get my work done. And it is very frustrating when they crash,
especially if this happens right before a deadline. I wish they had
been coded in Ada. (b) General purpose. Modern Ada seems to be
general purpose language like C or C++ (but much safer) which can be
used to write very serious commercial software. Since it is
compiled it is fast and harder for someone to steal the source code.
(c) From an engineering point of view, I like the modular
structure of the language. The AdaCore website gave me these
impressions, so I downloaded some free online Ada books and began to
study, and my interest in Ada has become very serious. But I've
encountered some serious roadblocks.

So, what are those roadblocks, and what needs to be done to encourage
more people to program in Ada?

1. A users group must be very easy to find. Every person or company
with a web site about Ada should put a link to this users
group.  It took me a month of doing many web searches to finally find
an Ada e-mail list. Since subscribing I have not received a
single post except for the welcome message!  Somehow I chanced to find
this newsgroup yesterday, and just in time, as I was about
to give up.  If there is no users group, I am not interested in
devoting the time to studying the language. In my opinion, a good,
friendly, helpful users group is very nearly as important as the
language itself. No matter how good a language is, if I can't get
help when I have problems, it does me no good.

2. All links to the Public Ada Library need to be fixed. AdaCore or
someone should buy the name (url) that was used by the Public
Ada Library, and make sure that all that source code is still
available.  I was expecting to be able to find lots of source code
that I could examine to see how real, working Ada programs are
written.  Almost every Ada web site I visited had a link to the
Public Ada Library, and not a link I tried worked. This really makes
Ada look dead.

3. AdaCore needs to make their compiler available free of charge for
commercial as well as non-profit and educational use. It
seems to me that there is no way this would hurt AdaCore, and would in
fact help a lot, as it would be the deciding factor to draw
many new programmers to Ada. I'm still interested in Ada, as I have
some non-profit uses for it. But, frankly, no small or medium
size companies, or one man shops in their right minds are going to
devote themselves to the time and study it takes to learn Ada
once they learn that to use the compiler for Ada commercially will
cost $14,000.00 for a one year license!  To be quite blunt,
that is just being downright unrealistic, especially when there are
many other languages available for free.  That is forcing people to
use C++ instead. Mr. Riehle states the truth. OUTRAGEOUSLY PRICED
COMPILERS IS THE BIGGEST BARRIER TO THE USE OF ADA. I'm still trying
to decide if it is worth learning, since it appears I would not be
able to sell any software produced, without paying for a license which
is totally out of reach. CHARGE FOR SUPPORT NOT FOR THE COMPILER!  :>)
That would make me happy anyway.

The  big companies needing to produce safe software would be even more
willing to use Ada and pay that high fee for trustworthy support if
they knew there were more Ada programmers they could hire when needed.
And if some of those small and medium sized companies and
one man shops are given a chance, they may some day grow to be able to
pay those high support fees too! Meanwhile, let them get
their support on newsgroups like this one. Once they really start
making money, they will be more than glad to pay high support
fees for the professional support only a compiler maker can give. But
with the compiler priced totally out of reach, there is no
chance for them to come to that point. "Cast thy bread upon the
waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."

Other Ada compiler companies can replace "AdaCore" in the above
paragraph with their own company's name. I predict that the first
company to make a certified Ada compiler with IDE freely available for
commercial use will soon dominate, as the result will be
that eventually most Ada programmers will be experienced in using
their compiler and IDE, and will go to them when they need safety
critical
support.

4. I'm rather hesitant to make this post, as it appears that it is
going to expose my e-mail address to the whole world. If this is not
the case it needs to be made clear. If it is the case that needs to be
fixed and the fix made clear.