Re: Ada95 Should be a Multivolume ISO Standard

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

In article <9610011027.AA12679@nile.gnat.com>, Robert Dewar <dewar@GNAT.COM> writes:
> A short postscriopt here. Bob Leif says
> 
> "L. Introduction: Professor Dewar and I have different views on the
> advisability of making interim changes to the Ada Standard.  I suspect that
> we are looking at the problem from two different prospectives. He is viewing
> it, as a superb software engineer, and I am looking at it from a business
> --More--perspective.  I believe the vast majority of the readers of this note wo
> very much like to see greater commercial usage of Ada.  I hope my arguments
> lead to a way to accomplish this without sacrificing the quality of Ada's
> design."
> 
> 
> This is an inaccurate characterization of my views. I am the CEO of one of
> the very few companies that is dedicated to the commercial success of Ada.
> My view are entirely motivated from a business point of view, I think
> a shifting standard for Ada, which involved the incorporation of inevitably
> less well reviewed extensions would be damaging from a business point of view.

I have endured Ada83 limitations in making commercial software since 1988.

I would like to endure Ada95 limitations in making commercial software
at least as long.

Diversity in the programming language supported by compilers I buy
is a liability.  In contrasting Ada to Pascal (my second choice) I
am beginning to believe that the stronger typing is less compelling
than the stronger standard (i.e., honored by compiler vendors).

Even if extensions are perfectly reviewed, unless they are available
from all my chosen vendors, they are not useful.  To whatever extent
just a subset of my chosen vendors spend time implementing them, they
are in fact counter-productive since they distract those vendors from
making other improvements like the IDE or the optimizer or the quality
of error messages or lowering the price.

Larry Kilgallen