Can Ada by popularized faster ?

Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[safetran]

Yes, I do think that we can do more than we are doing. Maybe I am just
not aware of all the efforts going on and will be happy to be
enlightened.  I come across uninformed criticisms of Ada quite often and
find it irritating. Which is what prompted this post.

Other than Ada I also use C/C++ and so am quite aware of the benefits
that Ada provides. However discussions with collegues and others makes
me realise that Ada suffers from a very strong market perception as
being cumbersome, restrictive, slow, large, bulky and "that" defense
thing.

Few "amusing" encounters:
I have been asked "It must be really slow to program in Ada."  When I
asked why,  the reason given was that in Ada we have to type a lot of
words (syntax is wordy) where-as in C/C++ most of the syntax is cryptic
(and so it takes longer to program in Ada !!).

Another interesting example I found in the Slackware LINUX Unleashed
book.  This book has a section on the GNAT compiler and in it the author
states that Ada was so named as to honour one of the developers of the
language !  Check it out next time you go to the bookshop (I think it
was page 560).

For a new project I am starting I need an in-circuit emulator.  So
yesterday I called a few vendors.  One of the vendors told me that they
do not support Ada as Ada code is very slow and their engineers think
that Ada is not appropriate for embedded systems.  BTW, this is one of
the big suppliers of in-circuit emulators.

I think the Ada community needs to do something urgently to change this
market perception.  I read someplace that a DOD colonel was proposing
spending $1 million to do an advertising campaign. Is that the right way
to do this ? I don't know. I guess we need to go talk to some savvy
marketing types.  

Look at what Sun has done with Java in less than 2 years. Hardly a day
goes by without us hearing or reading something about Java. People say
that its all hype and marketing - does it really matter ? Its working
and Java is becoming popular.

Programmers and magazine articles refer to Java's elegance and strong
type checking or that it is a safer language than C/C++.  Ada has had
these since 1983. But few outside the Ada community know that.  I have
talked to C/C++ programmers who have criticised Ada because it has
strong type checking and it does not let you do "hacky" things. But then
they go ahead and praise Java for its strong type checking !!   The
level of ignorance that exists in the world about Ada, even among
experienced developers, is really quite amazing. 

One of the problems I perceive in the Ada market is that Ada tools
vendors have been quite complascent.  How many vendors have products
that compare with Microsoft VC++ or Borland C++ and at a comparable
price ?  

I am told that Ada compilers/tools should be more expensive because it
takes a lot more effort to develop an Ada compiler (than a C++ one) and
Ada compilers catch a lot more bugs thus reducing development effort and
time.  While I agree with all this,  the bottom-line is that if the
tools cost a lot more or are not as user friendly then the average
company/programmer are not going to buy them. In addition, if the Ada
tool vendors think that they have a captive market in the defense and
aerospace companies then they are not going to do a lot of marketing for
Ada. However, as we have seen it does not really pay to be complascent.

Another related problem is that there is very little press coverage of
Ada.  Most of the coverage I see is in defense oriented magazines.  It
is not common to see articles on Ada and its benefits in magazines like
Embedded Systems Programming,  EE Times etc.  C/C++ articles, and now
Java ones, dominate most pages.

A few things that we could do are:

- Improve Market Perception: Ada has a very poor market perception. We
need to do a lot more advertising of Ada's benefits as a programming
environment and language. Specially benefits as applying to the
commercial world e.g. improving time to market or lower development
costs etc. The fact that Ada can be used to do telecommunication
systems, databases, systems (OS) programming or device drivers should be
advertised.  Few people know that Ada can be used for these kinds of
applications.  A _LOT_ of people think that it is a language used only
for defense systems or only for the embedded world. There needs to be a
lot more articles in the common and technical press to increase
awareness. Another example is that very few people know that you can
convert Ada programs into Java byte codes.

- Improve Market Visibility:  Send out newsletters or mailers to
developers (like Sun does for Java) advertising the benefits of Ada and
successful Ada projects.   People say negative things about Ada and then
this becomes self feeding with more people criticizing the language
without even knowing anything about it. And while the original criticism
may have been valid its context is completely lost along the way. 
Mailers and magazine articles can be used to try and dispel some of the
negative perceptions.

- Improved Tools: Have better Ada tools from a lot more vendors - these
should be more user-friendly, conform to the current state of the art
for C++ tools and be easier to use/learn. eg the VxWorks environment for
C/C++ which integrates compilers, linkers, debuggers, in-circuit
emulators, design tools etc.  The tools should also be cheaper.

- Improved Processor Support: We need ports of GNAT as a cross-compiler
to common platforms (eg X86, Motorola 68K and PowerPC).  Maybe we could
provide a graphical, user friendly interface. Ports of GNAT to run on
(say) VxWorks, pSOS+ and other commonly used commercial real-time OSes
would also help.

- Maybe we should consider some way that Ada can be more easily
accomodated on lower end micro-controllers.  There is a huge market that
uses lower end 8 bit controllers.  And contrary to popular perception
this market is not becoming smaller as 32 bit processors become more
pervasive. Is there something we can do to target the 68HC11's, 68HC08's
etc that are out there ?  Sometimes these processors are used in safety
critical systems;  with C or C++ of course.

Is ACT or someone else in the Ada community attempting to tackle these
issues ?  

--
Rakesh

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Kenneth W. Sodemann]

Dave Wood wrote in message <343DF700.87754946@sd.aonix.com>...
>safetran wrote:
>> How many vendors have products
>> that compare with Microsoft VC++ or Borland C++ and at a comparable
>> price ?
>
>I can think of one, and their name (unchanged for nearly a year
>now) starts with an A, ends with an X, and has ONI in the middle.

As a casual user of OA (Pro version) (we use a different Ada environment at
work, but I bought OA for use at home), and a user of several different C++
environments, I must disagree with statement to some extent.

1.)  OA Pro costs about twice what I could get VC++ Pro for.  This can be
expected, of course, mainly due to volume, and the fact that you can find
deals on VC++ just by turning around.  Still, I thought I would point this
out, as it means that it is not offered at a "comparable price".

2.)  In order for OA to really compare to VC++, the pro version ought to
come with three items that it currently does not:
   a.)  MFC bindings.
   b.)  Wizards for those binding.
   c.)  Some "Resource Workshop" type of program.
Item 2.c could be fully integrated (like App Studio in VC++) or not (like RW
in BC++), but either way, it should be there.  This would _really_ go a long
way in making your product comparable with VC++.

3.)  On a note related to 2.c -- keeping the GUI builder that comes with OA
at this time would be OK for folks currently using it, but I personally
would find the MFC binding / Wizards / RW -- AppStudio combination to be
much more useful.

In short, the current Aonix offering is more akin to Watcom than to VC++ or
BC++.  IOW, it's not bad, but it has a ways to go yet.

Side question for Dave:  If I were to purchase the MFC bindings OA (which I
am assuming I can do without going all the way to the enterprise edition),
do those come with some sort of "wizard" or "builder" package, or do I just
get the raw bindings?

(reply posted and e-mailed).

Thanks;
--
with Std_Disclaimer;  use Std_Disclaimer;
Signature.Put (Name => Ken Sodemann,
    E_Mail => kwsodema@avistainc.com
    Web => http://www.pcii.net/~stuffel
    Company_Web => http://www.avistainc.com);

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Dave Wood]

I find your letter interesting in that it provides an eclectic
mix of accurate deductions, naive assumptions, positive
spirit, and nascent defeatism.  It's probably a decent 
microcosm of the "Ada community"!  I have a few comments to
contribute.

safetran wrote:
> 
> Yes, I do think that we can do more than we are doing. Maybe I am just
> not aware of all the efforts going on and will be happy to be
> enlightened.  I come across uninformed criticisms of Ada quite often and
> find it irritating. Which is what prompted this post.

In my estimation, the situation of Ada today is a combination of
(a) federal ineptitude, (b) corporate lack of foresight, and (c) really
unfortunate timing.  The federal ineptitude is probably clear
enough to everyone - well-meaning but poorly considered mandates
and porkbarrel funding initiatives of the '80s.  The corporate
lack of foresight speaks to the feeding frenzy resulting from (a).
There were so many lucrative, poorly planned, and ineptly managed
Ada programs that how could the Ada contractors/ vendors help
but to take part, rather than to work at building a solid 
infrastructure for long-term growth and health?  The result
was a pretty dismal early legacy of big, slow, and non-competitive
compilers and tools.  This is pretty much all behind us, of course,
but bad reputations are hard to shake.

Unfortunate timing?  Well, from around 1992 to 1996 the Ada suppliers
not only had to shake the early reputation, they also had to deal
with the end of the cold war, followed by contraction of their
primary core market, followed by a wave of consolidations and
mergers, followed by the extraordinarily painful transition to
a whole new language standard and consequent technology shift,
coincident with the relentless rise of C/C++, the meteoric
hype of Java, the continuing plunge of compiler prices, and
the intense "feature-creep" pressure of compilers from people
like Microsoft and Borland.  This is an awful lot, I think you 
will agree, with which to contend.  Enlightening the ignorant 
C/ C++ masses takes a back seat to simple survival under such 
circumstances.

Ah, but 1997 and 1998 are a different story...

[typical "outsider" misperceptions snipped]

> I think the Ada community needs to do something urgently to change this
> market perception.  I read someplace that a DOD colonel was proposing
> spending $1 million to do an advertising campaign. Is that the right way
> to do this ? I don't know. I guess we need to go talk to some savvy
> marketing types.

I'm a marketing type, I don't know about savvy.

I will tell you that a $1 million marketing budget would be
a pretty good start for convincing those who are already 
convinced.

I would welcome a $1,000,000 marketing  budget as an excellent 
step for me to work at taking market share from other Ada 
suppliers.

However, it wouldn't begin to make the slightest dent in 
terms of having Ada break into the non-Ada sector.

[To be sure, we do have C/C++ people switching to Ada from time
to time.  However, I don't think a minor league marketing 
campaign would have an effect on this trend.  These people
just happen to be unusually smart.]

> Look at what Sun has done with Java in less than 2 years. Hardly a day
> goes by without us hearing or reading something about Java. People say
> that its all hype and marketing - does it really matter ? Its working
> and Java is becoming popular.

Ah, now there's an example of really *excellent* timing.  Combined
with interesting technology, frothy media hype thanks to the web
connection, and belated but extreme marketing efforts by a lot of
really huge companies, this is a potent force.  This is an almost
surreal combination of lucky factors and it would be pure pipe dream
to imagine that lighting could strike twice at this level.

 
> Programmers and magazine articles refer to Java's elegance and strong
> type checking or that it is a safer language than C/C++.  Ada has had
> these since 1983. But few outside the Ada community know that.  I have
> talked to C/C++ programmers who have criticised Ada because it has
> strong type checking and it does not let you do "hacky" things. But then
> they go ahead and praise Java for its strong type checking !!   The
> level of ignorance that exists in the world about Ada, even among
> experienced developers, is really quite amazing.

But of course technical merit has very little correlation to 
market success.

> 
> One of the problems I perceive in the Ada market is that Ada tools
> vendors have been quite complascent.  

Many of us working 12 hour days will take exception to this 
perception.  :-(


> How many vendors have products
> that compare with Microsoft VC++ or Borland C++ and at a comparable
> price ?

I can think of one, and their name (unchanged for nearly a year
now) starts with an A, ends with an X, and has ONI in the middle.

 
> I am told that Ada compilers/tools should be more expensive because it
> takes a lot more effort to develop an Ada compiler (than a C++ one) and
> Ada compilers catch a lot more bugs thus reducing development effort and
> time.  While I agree with all this,  the bottom-line is that if the
> tools cost a lot more or are not as user friendly then the average
> company/programmer are not going to buy them. In addition, if the Ada
> tool vendors think that they have a captive market in the defense and
> aerospace companies then they are not going to do a lot of marketing for
> Ada. However, as we have seen it does not really pay to be complascent.

Personally, I don't buy the notion that Ada development environments
cost *that* much more to develop (compared to, say, C++), especially
once the core technology is in place.  This was more of an issue in
the early days.  In any event, this is not the primary price driver.

A better reason for Ada compilers to be more expensive is that the
market is smaller.

Microsoft will move about two orders of magnitude greater of C++
compilers than all the Ada vendors put together.  You do the math.

Another way to look at it is this:  what Microsoft does with their
pricing is simple for them.  By comparison, what the Ada vendors
do (well, some of them, at any rate) is nothing short of heroic.
Or maybe suicidal. :-)  By this measure, *Microsoft* is complacent.
The difference is they can get away with it.
 
> Another related problem is that there is very little press coverage of
> Ada.  Most of the coverage I see is in defense oriented magazines.  It
> is not common to see articles on Ada and its benefits in magazines like
> Embedded Systems Programming,  EE Times etc.  C/C++ articles, and now
> Java ones, dominate most pages.

Please write some articles, by all means.

Previously on this forum I've offered to provide free development
environments to those who propose publishing important and relevant
articles or books, or working to develop freely available 
software demonstrating how great Ada can be.  I don't have any
takers yet.

 
> A few things that we could do are:
> 
> - Improve Market Perception: Ada has a very poor market perception. 

The very best thing that people can do is to build a lot of
successful Ada applications.  Nothing speaks as loudly as
success.  


> - Improved Tools: Have better Ada tools from a lot more vendors - these
> should be more user-friendly, conform to the current state of the art
> for C++ tools and be easier to use/learn. eg the VxWorks environment for
> C/C++ which integrates compilers, linkers, debuggers, in-circuit
> emulators, design tools etc.  The tools should also be cheaper.
> 
> - Improved Processor Support: We need ports of GNAT as a cross-compiler
> to common platforms (eg X86, Motorola 68K and PowerPC).  Maybe we could
> provide a graphical, user friendly interface. Ports of GNAT to run on
> (say) VxWorks, pSOS+ and other commonly used commercial real-time OSes
> would also help.

This is an interesting juxtaposition of concepts.  On the one hand, 
you want GNAT (free) solutions all over the place.  On the other hand,
you want "more vendors" in the Ada business, providing tools that 
"should also be cheaper".

The cost of entry into the Ada business is very high.  Indeed, the
cost of *staying* in is high.  How many new vendors will be 
enticed into such a market with a pervasive and entrenched freeware
solution to compete against?

I have often stated that GNAT is a net good thing for the Ada 
community, but to be fair, I feel confident saying so because
I feel strongly that my products are so good that their market
share is safe against GNAT, so long as we continue to work hard
to extend our advantages and eliminate our deficiencies.  On the 
other hand, if I wasn't already in the business, I'd be hard pressed 
to justify getting into it at this point.

If your definition of a strong Ada situation is that there should
be several healthy, growing, and self-investing independent 
vendors actively supplying the market, the best thing you can 
do is to support those vendors by buying their products

-- Dave Wood
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- Aonix - "We don' need no steeenking mandate!"
-- http://www.aonix.com

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[No Spam]

Dave Wood wrote:
> 
> I find your letter interesting in that it provides an eclectic
> mix of accurate deductions, naive assumptions, positive
> spirit, and nascent defeatism.  It's probably a decent
> microcosm of the "Ada community"!  I have a few comments to
> contribute.
<lots of good stuff snipped>

Here's an idea which I have suggested before and would do myself were I
to have the available resources:

Think of why C got so popular: The language itself wasn't the issue - it
was all the other things that were bundled around it. The Unix OS, Lots
of platforms it was bundled with, availability on small systems for use
in Universities, Single Board Computer manufacturers targeting compilers
to their specialized little computers, etc. etc. Pretty soon it was the
volume of applications that got it entrenched.

I don't think anyone is going to go out and write the next Great
American Operating System in Ada any time soon, but if they did, Ada
would quickly get a toe hold on a large market. Developing some similar
important million-user-app would be as effective, but what would it be?

My personal interest would be to get a relatively inexpensive single
board computer that had Ada riding on a PC platform with the support
stuff needed to plug my code into the SBC and drive it around. Boards
like this regularly sell for a couple of hundred dollars and typically
have the development environment bundled in at some nominal additional
cost. (This means you get a C compiler, linking, loading and debugging
software, interface to the PC from a serial port and some other goodies)
So SBC developers have latched on big time to C just because thats what
they got when they bought into the board architecture.

What if the guys with the compilers were to put together an SBC - or
simply get into a partnership with an SBC manufacturer to bundle the
compiler with the development kit and collect some royalty? If the board
is popular *and* the development environment is really spiffy, providing
the stuff an embedded developer needs, maybe Ada gets to ride along with
somebody's industrial controller.

If you supply a run time kernel and maybe a bunch of hardware interface
code with the compiler and make it easy for some developer to include
all this software in the product, you could maybe get a small royalty
for every computer that drives around a Dodge Neon. Programmers may be
reluctant at first but if you go in the door with the pitch: "Let me
show you how much quicker you'll get to market using my compiler, my
RTK, my hardware interface code, my executive, my realtime monitor..." -
all that on top of the proven advantages of Ada for reliability, etc.
and you may win a bunch of converts.

If it isn't the SBC idea that excites you, then think of something along
a similar line. What if there were a spiffy data base out there which
was written in Ada and had all of it's programmer hooks specified in
Ada? Get enough people putting their address books into your runtime
database and developers of other software will want to build with
bindings to your runtime. Or a word/document processing package that had
a callable interface written in Ada so that end users find the product
to be hip and developers of other applications want to call your
software whenever they need to manipulate text?

I think there's some reasons Ada has an edge - it's use in college level
courses represents a big buy-in of future developers. All it needs is
some additional push because of an installed base of users of some
application other than the compiler itself.

Marin David Condic
CONDICMA@DONT.SEND.ME.SPAM.PWFL.COM

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Brian Rogoff]

On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, No Spam wrote:
> Dave Wood wrote:
> > 
> > I find your letter interesting in that it provides an eclectic
> > mix of accurate deductions, naive assumptions, positive
> > spirit, and nascent defeatism.  It's probably a decent
> > microcosm of the "Ada community"!  I have a few comments to
> > contribute.
> <lots of good stuff snipped>
> 
> Here's an idea which I have suggested before and would do myself were I
> to have the available resources:
> 
> Think of why C got so popular: The language itself wasn't the issue - it
> was all the other things that were bundled around it. The Unix OS, Lots
> of platforms it was bundled with, availability on small systems for use
> in Universities, Single Board Computer manufacturers targeting compilers
> to their specialized little computers, etc. etc. Pretty soon it was the
> volume of applications that got it entrenched.

We all have theories about why <product X> became popular and the
obviously superior <product Y> failed abysmally. I suspect that most 
of the theories are bunk, but your proposal has a hint of what I suspect 
is the right explanation. Unix was the agent that allowed C to gain a 
foothold in certain (techie/early-adopter) markets, and once enough
people were exposed to Unix (and therefore C) lots of other little things
got built (compilers for every machine for example) and there were enough
people who knew C and  would tell others in their "market" that soon we
had a positive feedback cycle and boom!, C is popular even among more 
conservative late adopter type engineers.

> I don't think anyone is going to go out and write the next Great
> American Operating System in Ada any time soon, but if they did, Ada
> would quickly get a toe hold on a large market. Developing some similar
> important million-user-app would be as effective, but what would it be?

I bet that a new OS in Ada would have little chance of success, unless
it offered something really different. How about an embedded OS, or 
one for hand-held computers or something? I bet that market is pretty 
saturated too, and I'm just ignorant of who the leaders are...

> My personal interest would be to get a relatively inexpensive single
> board computer that had Ada riding on a PC platform with the support
> stuff needed to plug my code into the SBC and drive it around. Boards
> like this regularly sell for a couple of hundred dollars and typically
> have the development environment bundled in at some nominal additional
> cost. (This means you get a C compiler, linking, loading and debugging
> software, interface to the PC from a serial port and some other goodies)
> So SBC developers have latched on big time to C just because thats what
> they got when they bought into the board architecture.

Isn't there a recurring discussion on this ng about the lack of an Ada 
compiler which targets the 8051, or some other popular embedded
controller? 

> I think there's some reasons Ada has an edge - it's use in college level
> courses represents a big buy-in of future developers. All it needs is
> some additional push because of an installed base of users of some
> application other than the compiler itself.

Hmmm, I and my classmates at some unnamed institution were exposed to Lisp
in college level courses, and that didn't seem to help Lisp :-). 

Seriously, for Ada to succeed it should have a niche; looking for a killer 
app to propel it forward is improbable. I like your SBC idea, but that
market seems controlled by C now (is it?). Where would you propose
focusing a development effort to dislodge it? 

Have you read any books on marketing ("Crossing the Chasm" and "The 22
Immutable Laws of Marketing" are my faves) for insight into the situation? 
The main idea I have here is that much attention should be focused onto
*one* niche at the outset, before expansion into broader markets. I think 
the embedded market is a natural, though that may require a bit of
subsetting unless you only want to tackle memory rich environments.

-- Brian

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Steve Doiel]

IMHO Ada is just now becoming 'ripe' for common consumption.  The Ada 
programming language has been there for quite some time, but the development 
environments have been behind.

When a decent debugger gets added to these environments, and a complete GUI 
builder that doesn't make you feel like you're crippled when compared to 
Delphi or Visual BASIC, then I will consider Ada to be in a position to 
compete directly with the more popular environments.

As a programming language I believe that Ada is superior to C, C++, and Delphi 
Pascal, but the development envrionment is still playing catch-up.  But it's 
very close now.  Maybe with the next ObjectAda release?

When this happens, we won't need campaigns to help popularize Ada... it will 
come naturally.

The trick is making it so that there are no big reasons for not using Ada, 
which I believe will happen soon.

SteveD

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96]

Brian Rogoff <bpr@SHELL5.BA.BEST.COM> writes:
>
>Seriously, for Ada to succeed it should have a niche; looking for a killer
>app to propel it forward is improbable. I like your SBC idea, but that
>market seems controlled by C now (is it?). Where would you propose
>focusing a development effort to dislodge it?
>
    Well, the killer-app idea isn't necessarily totally improbable.
    For example, there is AdaSAGE which provides a database developed
    in Ada and is in the public domain. (it is, isn't it?) If a
    compiler vendor were to glom onto it, put some helpful glue
    software around it to make it easy to use in their environment,
    the product becomes instantly more attractive. If someone used
    that to build a nice desktop application - like an address book or
    calendar or whatever - which caught on because it was inexpensive
    or did something real unique or was easier to use than other
    products - there's where you might get a market generated for
    add-ons. Database apps are real good for that because once someone
    has invested all their data in a particular format, they are
    naturally going to want additional capabilities not provided by
    the original tool. (Lots of folks build add-on software that
    depends on Oracle being out there, eh?)

    As for the SBC idea, I'd have to say my impression is that C
    pretty well dominates there. But think of this: Out there
    somewhere you've got GNAT available and the GCC back end is
    supposed to be pretty easy to port. Building the port of the back
    end would give you the ability to provide Ada, C, Fortran and
    maybe a bunch of other languages for your target. (Think of the
    sales pitch: "Sure, we think Ada is cool, but if you need language
    X for some subset of the system, we've got the compiler and Ada
    can easily connect to it!") Then there's the RTEMS RTK available
    so you have runtime support on a bare machine. And you've got GDB
    available as a starting point for developing a debugger. Oh,
    you've got some holes to fill, (linkers, realtime monitors,
    debuggers, etc.), but it's not like you're starting at
    bottom-dead-center. So probably 80-90% of an embedded development
    environment already constructed for you. It's just got to be
    pulled together, retargeted and made into a seamless, easy to use
    tool. (As an embedded developer, I havn't got the time to fool
    around with integrating a bunch of stuff I've pulled together from
    50 different places. I just want to buy an already integrated
    environment and get started building my app.)

    So let's suppose you've got the "basic" development environment
    built and you plan on adding on creature comforts as you go along.
    Now you're probably at least "competitive" with the C compilers
    that are bundled with most SBCs. To get an edge, you've got to
    provide lots of easy to use, well thought out and well documented
    libraries of stuff that makes building the embedded app a lot
    easier. Clearly, you need libraries which make the I/O easy (lots
    of C kits are going to include something like this, but with Ada
    you could make it better) and you need things to make interfacing
    to the bare hardware easier. I could see how with Ada95 you could
    rather easily build a mini, generic scheduler which would border
    on being a real RTOS - except it would be lean and tailorable.

    The key here would be providing as much general purpose support
    code for the particular SBC as possible and doing it *better* than
    a hodge-podge collection of C subroutines. Think of it as a
    "thick" binding to the hardware. The thicker the binding, the less
    work the embedded developer has to do. If it's done well, your
    selling point is quicker time to market because the developer
    doesn't have to build all this stuff from the ground up. And since
    you're going to provide the source code, etc. he can always get
    around the binding right down to the bare metal if he has to.

    Oh, there'd still be lots of persuading and demonstrating to do to
    convince your garden variety embedded SBC developer that Ada *can*
    do the job and that he *wants* to use Ada to do the job, but I
    don't see it as impossible. One thing is clear to me - if nobody
    is willing to *try* to penetrate these markets, there's no use
    telling me how wonderful Ada is for embedded programming because
    no matter how badly I want to use it, I can't. I'm not well served
    if the Ada supporter just lies there telling me how great it's going
    to be.

    I believe in Ada as a superior language and we use it here on lots
    of projects. I'd love to see Ada available on inexpensive, small
    SBC's so I could put it to work in other areas.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer     Voice:     561.796.8997
Pratt & Whitney GESP, M/S 731-96, P.O.B. 109600  Fax:       561.796.4669
West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600                  Internet:  CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
===============================================================================
    "Eagles may soar, but a weasle never gets sucked up into a jet engine."
===============================================================================

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Robert Dewar]

Marin said

<<Well, the killer-app idea isn't necessarily totally improbable.
For example, there is AdaSAGE which provides a database developed
in Ada and is in the public domain>>

I don't think so, but someone else can clarify.

There is *very* little Ada related software in the public domain (certainly
GNAT and its tools are NOT public domain!)

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96]

> Brian Rogoff <bpr@SHELL5.BA.BEST.COM> writes:
>Right. I think the SBC market is interesting from an Ada point of view.
>What are the main CPUs being used? Is a bare bones Ada compiler available
>for it?
>
    Well, for starters, almost any compiler that would be considered
    suitable for the SBC market would hardly be considered "bare
    bones." The quality of the code that comes out of it must be
    extremely efficient and highly reliable. Even a minor inefficiency
    starts to multiply rapidly in a chunk of code that runs once a
    milisecond. Any compiler bug that produces bad code creates the
    possibility of an error escaping into the field which can be
    *very* costly. So just the compiler itself has to be above and
    beyond what one might find acceptable, say, for teaching computer
    programming using an MS-DOS based computer.

    P.S. I am assured by folks who should know that there is no need
    to trim the Ada standard in order to get Ada to fit inside some of
    the small microprocessors in question. (At one time, yes, but
    compiler technology has improved considerably.)

    Then, because you're going to a bare piece of hardware without the
    luxury of an OS, you've got to have a cross-linker that darned
    well better be able to give you real good control of where
    anything and everything goes in memory and it has to be able to
    tell you reliably what it actually did. Surprises aren't fun! It
    needs to output IEEE symbol tables, Motorola S-Records and/or
    similar load formats.

    You need some kind of ability to load code into the card - which
    gets real dependent on the architecture of the card. We typically
    use a real time monitor of our own design that goes into startup
    ROM and communicates with a chunk of software on the host system
    which acts as our loader and our debugging system.

    You've got to have all of that just in order to play the game. We
    aren't even yet talking about bells and whistles.

    As for target processors, our engine controls are designed around
    things like the 68040 - where processor selection had to take into
    account availability of an Ada compiler. But there are lots of
    small jobs, custom one-offs, test hardware, etc. where things like
    the 68HC11 on an off-the shelf board makes the most sense.
    Micronix makes a nice little board based on this processor.
    Z-World sells a fair number of Z180 based SBCs. EMAC is another
    company with similar machines. Check out the web pages to get a
    flavor of what they're building with:

    http://www.emacinc.com/
    http://www.zworld.com/
    http://www.agt.net/public/micronix/
    http://www.claritech.demon.co.uk/


    Lots of companies make cards based on 80x86 processors, but these
    tend to be PC compatible computers which run some real time
    version of MS-DOS and tend to want to communicate with devices as
    separate cards - whereas the type of machine I'm interested in is
    the kind of thing that has one or more A/D-D/A converters a
    handful of discretes, a serial link and that's about it.

    I have not heard of any Ada compilers targeted to 68HC11, Z180,
    8051, 68HC16 or other processors you see on the web pages of the
    SBC manufacturers. That doesn't mean there aren't any - just that
    a) the SBC manufacturers aren't hawking one along with their
    development kit and b) nobody has brought to my attention any
    third-party solutions. It might not do any good simply to have, for
    example, a port of GNAT to one of these machines unless you could
    provide simultaneously all the related software that has to work
    with the output of GNAT. As you can imagine, that's not a trivial
    request.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer     Voice:     561.796.8997
Pratt & Whitney GESP, M/S 731-96, P.O.B. 109600  Fax:       561.796.4669
West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600                  Internet:  CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
===============================================================================
    "Eagles may soar, but a weasle never gets sucked up into a jet engine."
===============================================================================

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[the_walrus]

Peter Hermann wrote:
 
> Can some kind english speaking soul explain to me the meaning
> of that subject line?     :-(

Replace 'y' with 'e' ...

walrus.

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

Steve Doiel wrote:
> 
> IMHO Ada is just now becoming 'ripe' for common consumption.  The Ada

> As a programming language I believe that Ada is superior to C, C++, and Delphi
> Pascal, but the development envrionment is still playing catch-up.  But it's
> very close now.  Maybe with the next ObjectAda release?
> 
> When this happens, we won't need campaigns to help popularize Ada... it will
> come naturally.
> 

I can get Delphi Professional for $300. I can get Visual Basic
Professional for 
the same money. I can get JBuilder Professional for the same money. I
can get C++Builder
or Visual C++ for the same money. I can get ISE Eiffel for about the
same money. 
These are complete versions, no restrictions and strings attached. 

How much I have to pay for a version of ObjectAda that has the GUI
Builder enabled?...

Andrew Lew

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Peter Hermann]

Can some kind english speaking soul explain to me the meaning
of that subject line?     :-(

--
Peter Hermann  Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de
Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen
Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney)

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Paul H. Whittington]

AdaSAGE, now called Sage-ST, is not public domain.

Sage-ST is free for use by the US government, and must be licensed
for commercial use.

For complete information see
  http://sageftp.inel.gov/sage/homepage.htm


Robert Dewar wrote:

> Marin said
>
> <<Well, the killer-app idea isn't necessarily totally improbable.
> For example, there is AdaSAGE which provides a database developed
> in Ada and is in the public domain>>
>
> I don't think so, but someone else can clarify.
>
> There is *very* little Ada related software in the public domain (certainly
> GNAT and its tools are NOT public domain!)

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[William A Whitaker]

Somewhere on this thread someone suggested that Ada needed a "killer
application" and that an operating system would be a case in point (like
C -> UNIX).

In the mid 80's Steve Squires promised (in writing) to have the
second/production phase of the CMU MACH OS done in Ada, in line with
DARPA's responsibility under the DoD direction.  This was then to be the
end all of operating systems and the world would beat a path to its/out
door.

I do not know the details, I suppose that CMU just could not be bothered
and DARPA folded over the matter.  (The alternative is that Steve was a
disremembering bureaucrat ten years before it was popular I refuse to
entertain!)

And in the end, MACH was not the killer application it was supposed to
be (unless it killed Next).

I just wanted to remind the group of that little bit of history.

Whitaker

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Tom Moran]

>Think of why C got so popular: The language itself wasn't the issue - it
>was all the other things that were bundled around it. The Unix OS, Lots

Thinking about the development and spreading of Unix/C in particular,
and Netscape and Java to some extent, I draw these lessons:
 
Technical: Create a product that has at least some improvements over the
competition that you can hang your hat on.  But it can have deficiencies
too - ignore them.
 
Economics: Substantially underprice your competition, at least until
you've crushed him.  Giving away your product when your competition
charges thousands is best.  Note that the price of the competitive
product is zero to any potential customer who already has it.  You must
compete against something that will actually cost him money.
 
Sociology: Get lots of (unpaid) folks working for you in R&D and sales.
E.g. get grad students or moonlighting programmers to make add-ons that
add value to your product.  As a by-product, they will encourage the use
of whatever they are expert in - namely your product.
 
Psychology: Financial motivation of buyers, developers, and salesman, as
above, is necessary, but psychology is what will really put them 'over
the top'.  Use such things as aesthetic, moral, or in-group arguments,
ie, your product is more 'elegant', the competition is a nasty giant
corporation (or Bill Gates), people who don't see the light are
dinosaurs, etc.
 
Financing: Selling something to a large market is a big job and,
especially with 'crush the competition' pricing, will take a long to
time return the investment. Try to get someone else - telephone users, a
university, the government, or a corporation or individual with very
deep pockets, to finance the project.

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Larry Elmore]

Dave Wood wrote:

> 4. The AmigaOS was written in (I think) B, or BPL,
> or something like that.  The OS was quite wonderful
> and well ahead of its time as a desktop OS.  Didn't
> do much for the underlying language, though.

As I recall, the kernel was written in BCPL, which was a cousin of C, I
think (both derived from B?). The windowing system and other outer
layers were written in C. (I think the kernel was written in England
while the rest was done in America)  I seem to remember having to worry
about the order in which parameters were passed to OS calls--one way for
those parts having been written in C and reverse order for those parts
written in BCPL. Of course, I was using Forth with OO extensions on the
Amiga, so maybe I had to deal with things C programmers didn't, and it
has been a few years...

Certainly the Amiga was a fantastic little machine, and I might have
stuck with it for home use if Commodore hadn't been suicidally stupid
about the whole thing. Actually, Commodore was _so_ stupid that
sometimes I really wondered if key elements of their corporate
management weren't secretly on IBM's payroll...

> No, I rather think what made C popular was not the fact that Unix was
> written in it, per se, but

> rather that Unix and C were free and further that
> they were widely used in academia.  C appeals to
> bitheads, hackers, and (dubious) academics, who
> after all are the dominant computing species
> almost by definition.  Being part of an open system
> and surrounded by all those little hacker tools
> with cute bithead names (awk!!) oddly enough
> helped rather than hurt.  Perfect combination
> to flourish in an academic environment.
>
> Ada will never be C because, well, Ada is not C.
> It shares C's power and utility, but not its
> essential bithead/ hacker characteristics.  On
> the other hand, Ada's essential characteristics
> can provide a competitive edge to the brave and
> wise minority who choose to use it.
>
> I don't think that's such a bad thing.

When I was first (involuntarily) exposed to Ada, I _really_ disliked it.
Too big, too verbose, too nitpicky and anal... I'm a convert, though. I
still prefer Forth for small personal projects (it's just plain _fun_),
but I would _vastly_ prefer Ada over C or C++ for any non-trivial
project!

Larry

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <3451A98F.B3DFF971@sd.aonix.com>, Dave Wood <dpw@sd.aonix.com> writes:
> William A Whitaker wrote:
>> 
>> Somewhere on this thread someone suggested that Ada needed a "killer
>> application" and that an operating system would be a case in point (like
>> C -> UNIX).
> 
> This seems easy to counter-argue.  Here are a couple
> of examples:

> 3. VMS was written in (I think) BLISS.  VAX/VMS was
> quite dominant for a time.  Who the hell has ever
> heard of or cared about BLISS on any significant
> level?

VMS was about 50 % in VAX Macro assembler language (good for
what it does but hardly useful on another system) with the
rest in Bliss.  There are a few further lessons, though --
initially DEC would not sell a Bliss compiler to customers
with support at all -- you got one unsupported and "free"
with your $25,000 purchase of a source code license for VMS.
If you wrote some software of your own and it did not compile,
tough.

Subsequently DEC had a fairly uniform price for all their
compilers, and they offered Bliss at twice that price !!!

A couple of years ago DEC decided to withdraw the product
and now Bliss is available for VAX VMS and Alpha VMS on the
Freeware Disc.

Much as I hate to admit it, Dave, this does point out the
need for wise Product Management :-)

> Ada will never be C because, well, Ada is not C.  
> It shares C's power and utility, but not its
> essential bithead/ hacker characteristics.  On
> the other hand, Ada's essential characteristics
> can provide a competitive edge to the brave and
> wise minority who choose to use it.
> 
> I don't think that's such a bad thing.  

I don't think it would be a bad idea if careful design
capabilities were a majority interest. But meanwhile
please spread your own product to Windows NT Alpha :-)

> -- Dave Wood
> -- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows

Larry Kilgallen

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Dave Wood]

William A Whitaker wrote:
> 
> Somewhere on this thread someone suggested that Ada needed a "killer
> application" and that an operating system would be a case in point (like
> C -> UNIX).

This seems easy to counter-argue.  Here are a couple
of examples:

1. Mac OS was written in Pascal.  Even in the Mac heyday,
Pascal was never commercially popular.

2. The UCSD P-System (eh? universal byte code??) was
written in Pascal and clearly was ahead of its
time.  See above, re: Pascal.  (For further irony,
some out there will realize that the head of the
company that was trying to commercialize this
proto-Java technology is now the CEO of a certain 
supplier of reasonably popular Ada 95 tools.)

3. VMS was written in (I think) BLISS.  VAX/VMS was
quite dominant for a time.  Who the hell has ever
heard of or cared about BLISS on any significant
level?

4. The AmigaOS was written in (I think) B, or BPL,
or something like that.  The OS was quite wonderful
and well ahead of its time as a desktop OS.  Didn't 
do much for the underlying language, though.

No, I rather think what made C popular was not the
fact that Unix was written in it, per se, but
rather that Unix and C were free and further that
they were widely used in academia.  C appeals to
bitheads, hackers, and (dubious) academics, who
after all are the dominant computing species 
almost by definition.  Being part of an open system
and surrounded by all those little hacker tools
with cute bithead names (awk!!) oddly enough
helped rather than hurt.  Perfect combination
to flourish in an academic environment.

Ada will never be C because, well, Ada is not C.  
It shares C's power and utility, but not its
essential bithead/ hacker characteristics.  On
the other hand, Ada's essential characteristics
can provide a competitive edge to the brave and
wise minority who choose to use it.

I don't think that's such a bad thing.  

-- Dave Wood
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- Aonix - "We don' need no steenking mandate!"
-- http://www.aonix.com

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[John Black]

Fascinating.  Can anyone here tell me what language Windows/DOS was
written in?

>1. Mac OS was written in Pascal.  Even in the Mac heyday,
>Pascal was never commercially popular.

>4. The AmigaOS was written in (I think) B, or BPL,
>or something like that.  The OS was quite wonderful
>and well ahead of its time as a desktop OS.  Didn't 
>do much for the underlying language, though.

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[W. Wesley Groleau x4923]

> Fascinating.  Can anyone here tell me what language Windows/DOS was
> written in?

D-minus.

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Stanley R. Allen]

John Black wrote:
> 
> Fascinating.  Can anyone here tell me what language Windows/DOS was
> written in?
> 

mostly intel assembler

-- 
Stanley Allen
mailto:s_allen@hso.link.com

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[TConiam]

>Dave Wood wrote:
>
>> 4. The AmigaOS was written in (I think) B, or BPL,
>> or something like that.  The OS was quite wonderful
>> and well ahead of its time as a desktop OS.  Didn't
>> do much for the underlying language, though.
>
>As I recall, the kernel was written in BCPL, which was a cousin of C, I
>think (both derived from B?). The windowing system and other outer
>layers were written in C. (I think the kernel was written in England
>while the rest was done in America)  

Yes,  Amiga DOS was written in BCPL (precursor? of B) in England and the Amiga
 Workbench was done in Motorola 68K assembly (now there's a processor, no silly
 segments and such) and partly in C in the USA.

The "Kernel"  was mostly hand coded assembly it think, while the libraries were
 in C.

This all just goes to show that superior technology like the Amiga (high res.
 color graphics, preemptive multitasking, sound, coprocessors, etc.) can be
 seriously wounded by bad marketing and lack of exposure.

Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 389 bytes --]


Larry Elmore <ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net> writes:

>As I recall, the kernel was written in BCPL, which was a cousin of C, I
>think (both derived from B?).

Back to front.
CPL begat BCPL which begat B which begat C which begat the Gorgons.

-- 
John �neas Byron O'Keefe; 1921/02/04-1997/09/27; TLG,TLTA,BBTNOTL.
Richard A. O'Keefe; RMIT Comp.Sci; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok