From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_40 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 8 Jun 93 17:24:25 GMT From: dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio -state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!ae@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Arthur Evans) Subject: Re: How to Make Ada more widely used? Message-ID: <1993Jun8.132425.4553@sei.cmu.edu> List-Id: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) says (in part): > ... the sorry state of the Ada industry [is due to] a bunch of > companies that had the chance to act like Silicon Valley > entrepreneurs, developing a government and a commercial market in > parallel, as so many companies have done. > Alas, they didn't act like Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They acted > like Beltway Bandits, jumping on to what they thought was an > infinitely long DoD gravy train, blowing off other market sectors and > the universities ... Probably some did; surely not all. One company I'm familiar with came into the business intending to specialize in the highest possible quality of compiled code. They quickly realized that this criterion was not terribly important in many markets and so concentrated on embedded applications. Although many of their customers are in the so-called "mandated" world, others are using Ada because they perceive that it best meets their needs, and are using this company because they really care about code quality. This company has no products for platforms such as PCs or Macs because such users are rarely willing to pay a lot extra to save the last few microseconds at run time. I certainly wouldn't pay on my Mac -- I'm much more concerned with ease of use. Otherwise, I agree with the point Mike has made. Why is there only one Ada vendor for the Mac? It would be instructive if some of the vendors would reply about how they see the market place. I expect they would raise some points we haven't seen here up to now. Art ---------------------------------------------- Arthur Evans, Jr, PhD Ada Consultant 461 Fairview Road Pittsburgh PA 15238-1933 412-963-0839 ae@sei.cmu.edu