Re: Gauntlet gathering rust and dust

[agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!news.den.mmc.com! iplmail!jcrigler@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Crigler)]

Tucker Taft (stt@spock.camb.inmet.com) replied to my lament over the
lack of replies to my original(original) posting about Ada vendors and
OOPSLA:

: It is generally a mistake to use responses in a network bulletin board
: as any statistical indication of anything.  There are many people who
: simply don't read comp.lang.<relevant-language>.  There are still more
: people who find comp.lang.ada in particular a frustrating bulletin
: board given its signal-to-noise ratio.  Finally, there are those who
: choose to use other forums to announce their intentions.

Point well taken.  After my complaining of Greg's not using real
statistics, here I am doing the same thing!  But I have the same
problem Greg has (though on a much smaller scale):  Are there any
real statistics to be had.

: Now of course us regular readers/contributors to comp.lang.ada presume
: that anyone who doesn't read and participate regularly is somewhat out
: to lunch, but I think we should be very careful not to thrust our
: personal view on the market as a whole.  It would be interesting to
: correlate dollars-and-cents success in the marketplace with participation
: in comp.lang.ada.  I suspect there is not much of a correlation.

Thanks for the perspective.  Agreed on both points.

: In any case, to answer part of your question, there will be an Ada 9X
: booth at OOPSLA '93, and a couple of tutorials.
[compiler status stuff deleted]

GOOD!

: You are right that much of the work on Object-Oriented Design began
: with Ada 83, but these days, it is clear that the people going to
: OOPSLA are interested in object-oriented *programming*, not just
: object-oriented design.  Although I agree that Ada vendors in general
: tend to limit themselves too much to the captive Ada market, I would
: not see OOPSLA as the best investment for their money this year.

Possibly true, which makes me that much happier that 9X the language will
have some presence.  Can you provide more details?  (My employer ...)

I read about the tutorials (cf original(original post))

: It is not even clear that conferences at all are a good investment
: for compiler vendors.  Compilers are fundamentally boring things to look at;
: and exhibition booths and space are expensive.
[stuff about marketing deleted]

But Alsys (at least) has (or had) a `free' all day product showcase
that goes from city to city (or, at least from defence city to defense
city) -- I've been to one.  So the materials and presentation are
already ready.

Jim Crigler jcrigler@polaris.orl.mmc.com
            crigler@longwood.cs.ucf.edu
            jc8715@olympus.ir-unix.ucf.edu
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Axiom 2:      a. Perspective is 90% of everything.
              b. Communication is the other half.
Corollary 1:  There exist non-orthogonal dimensions.