Ada and the Mac

Ada and the Mac

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

To: Mike  Feldman et al.
From: Bob Leif
You Wrote
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
Date:    Fri, 4 Oct 1996 11:48:34 -0400
From:    Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: New version of AppletMagic (was Re: Ada to byte-code compiler ...)

In article <epg23vaomq.fsf_-_@mesmer.camb.inmet.com>,
Vince Del Vecchio <vdelvecc@mesmer.camb.inmet.com> wrote:

>Intermetrics' AppletMagic release 1.6 is now available at
>http://www.inmet.com/javadir/download/ to replace the recently
>expired 1.5.  This release expires October 31.  I apologize for
>the delay between the expiration of the last version and this
>release.

Please let Vince know if you think Intermetrics ought to be keeping
the _Mac_ version of this compiler up to date with the rest.

Inmet won the Academic Ada contract which required a Mac implementation
(among others) but subsequently changed the deliverables to eliminate
the Mac version ("small market", I suppose).

"Well, we'll cover the Mac with AppletMagic", they said at the time.

Now they seem to be doing very little to the Mac version beyond the
initial release, which was a good start but is getting really behind
the other platforms.

Does anyone think there's a market for a Mac AppletMagic?

Mike Feldman
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------
Start Bob Leif
Please see Scientific Computing & Automation September 1996.

Special Mac and PowerMac Supplement. Page 26, Supplement pages MAC-1 to
MAC-14.
Scientific Computing & Automation has a Web page http://www.scamag.com
Unfortunately, it does not seem to reference the magazine articles.

The technological spin-offs-offs of Stanford tend to use Macintoshes. This
includes a significant part of Silicon Valley and the California Biotech
business. Our client, Phoenix Flow, has three target markets for their
analytical cytology software: DOS, Windows, and the Macintosh. None of their
customers have asked for POSIX/UNIX.

There is a very simple paradox. The Ada community needs to provide Mac
software to be able to sell Ada to the Windows market. Many Windows
developers intend to produce a version of their product for the Macintosh.
They correctly wish to reuse as much of their Windows code as possible. Ada
applications containing portable, thick bindings to the GUI have the
potential of being very cost effective for multiplatform development.

 I should note that I never have seen a reference to Ada in Scientific
Computing & Automation, other scientific journals, or the Analytical
Cytology literature, except for the few articles that I have authored. This
lack of use of Ada is both a tragedy and a scandal. DoD has developed an
excellent tool for scientific computation that is NOT used by the scientific
community. As a Chemist-Biomedical Engineer, I feel that I am close to being
a minority of 1.  If there are any other scientific users reading this
posting, please send me a note.

Besides the obvious improvements in instrument control and analysis
software, the use of Ada should facilitate Quantum Mechanical and other
complex scientific calculations.

Bob Leif