Re: Ada saved by gnat (was Re: Where's Aetech?)

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <3lv3et$dcb@news1.delphi.com>, tmoran@bix.com writes:

> The important question is not even 'does the GNAT experience
> bring people to Ada', but 'how many people does GNAT bring to Ada
> vs how many might have been attracted by a different way (eg
> carefully researched and directed advertising, bindings, etc)'
> of spending a similar amount of money.  ie, bang for the buck.

Effectiveness of advertising is considerably more difficult to measure
than just about anything pertaining to compilers.  A reasonable approach
is to avoid putting all of one's eggs into one basket.  The US government
has capabilities to do one thing with vigor -- throw money at a problem.
GNAT would seem to be an ideal candidate for that sort of approach (much
better than advertising, since you get something concrete out of it).

But the US (or any other) government has no capability for passion.
Those killer WEB pages, that idea for a better mechanism for SUN's
HTML interface, etc. are equally valid mechanisms, and thankfully do
not require government funding.

Likewise, articles in Embedded Systems Daily would be hopeless if they
required some government sign-off before being published.

Of course I don't think Ada has a chance unless it gets an advertising
budget equal to that which originally fielded the most rapidly growing
computer phenomenon - WWW :-).

Larry Kilgallen