Re: More Ganssle on Ada

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:32:02 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> On 19.01.13 15:19, Robert A Duff wrote:
>> Patrick <patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org> writes:
>> 
>>> ...is Ada only for life critical applications? Adacore seems to think
>>> so.
>> 
>> Why do you say so?  AdaCore builds all sorts of non-safety-critical
>> stuff in Ada.  Compilers come to mind.
> 
> I guess the point is that the article doesn't say so.
> 
> Rather, the interviewees talks about niches for Ada, tools, high
> integrity and other thing *not* part of AdaCore's compiler (sadly);
> they suggest it is wise to *not* consider Ada where other languages
> are chosen. Well, if you want people to listen to what you
> have to say about that old DoD government failure, doing the above
> might do the trick.
> 
> They list some technical reasons for not choosing Ada. These include
> presence of libraries, or availability of web servers,
> richer than a specialized thingie like AWS, I should think - hey,
> when would you tell anyone to stop using J2EE because there
> is AWS and be considered sane? Or some "embedded" equivalent of
> Java for mobile devices? Or not use Objective-C when there is no
> Objective-Ada yet?
> 
> If you feed on consultancy, a vague praise of everything, showing
> openness to other language choices, surely expresses experience, and the
> right attitude, both PR-wise and strategically, since if Ada consultants
> want to have a foot in  the door (or want less prejudiced readers,
> in Ganssle's case), then shouting and denigration don't usually help.

And, BTW, even in the niche areas like mission critical, it is to expect
new customers coming to you rather from the general purpose camp, than from
people actually specializing there. Those have their preferences already
and won't switch. So if you target the former, you will get mission
critical contracts as well. See how Java did it.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de