Why tagged types are a marketing mistake

Why tagged types are a marketing mistake

[Gregory Aharonian]

     For all of the comments on tagged types versus classes, which is quite
interesting to follow, I would like to offer an indirect proof that tagged
types are going to be a marketing disaster for Ada9X.
     Last month in Boston, the annual Object World conference and trade
show was held.  Not a large conference in absolute size, but for the object
oriented programming world, non-academic (go to OOPSLA), it was a large
show.  Many issues affecting the OO world were discussed at the conference,
many new products pushed at the trade show.

     Yet Ada was nowhere to be found.  Not a single company involved with
the Ada9X effort either had a booth at the trade show, or had speakers at
the conference.  No one there making the case for concepts like tagged types.
No on there making the case for Ada in general.

     At the trade show, I picked up a new newsletter from the Object
Management group, a new organization interested in promoting and coordinating
object oriented programming activities.  At the back of the newsletter is
a list of companies who are members of OMG, with about 280 member companies.
What companies and institutions are not members of the OMG?  Intermetrics,
Meridian, Aetech, R&R Systems, Alsys, Paramax, SAIC, AJPO, SEI, ASSET and
others: all the people involved with Ada9X.  Who is a member? Pretty much
every other object oriented language related company.  C/C++ companies are
all members, Smalltalk and Cobol companies, Lisp and Prolog companies,
every language except Ada.

     To cut off the Ada9X efforts from the general object oriented 
programming world is a gross mistake that indicates to me that the
designers of Ada have little interested in competing in the non-Mandated
world against object oriented language.  After all, Ada9X is far enough
along for someone to show up at Object World and make the case for the
language and diverging concepts such as tagged types.

     What is it, are you guys embarassed about what you are doing that you
don't show up and make the case for Ada?  Market share has to be won now,
and not a in few years, when everything is neatly wrapped up.  By then, all
the windows of opportunties will be closed.


Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization

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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Why tagged types are a marketing mistake

[Michael Feldman]

In article <C3oJE3.Jut@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
>
[stuff about Object World and the fact that Ada wasn't represented]

>     Yet Ada was nowhere to be found.  Not a single company involved with
>the Ada9X effort either had a booth at the trade show, or had speakers at
>the conference.  No one there making the case for concepts like tagged types.
>No on there making the case for Ada in general.
>
[more stuff]
>
>     To cut off the Ada9X efforts from the general object oriented 
>programming world is a gross mistake that indicates to me that the
>designers of Ada have little interested in competing in the non-Mandated
>world against object oriented language.  After all, Ada9X is far enough
>along for someone to show up at Object World and make the case for the
>language and diverging concepts such as tagged types.
>
>     What is it, are you guys embarassed about what you are doing that you
>don't show up and make the case for Ada?  Market share has to be won now,
>and not a in few years, when everything is neatly wrapped up.  By then, all
>the windows of opportunties will be closed.
>
Amen to that! Your posts are getting better, Greg!

Mike Feldman