From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,75aa769e81677a13,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-09-25 13:10:25 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!news2.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: tmoran@bix.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Creating markets + converting my employer Date: 25 Sep 1994 20:08:24 GMT Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation Message-ID: <364lbo$e2a@news.delphi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bix.com Date: 1994-09-25T20:08:24+00:00 List-Id: In Re: converting my employer to Ada?, Frank Manning says > I wonder if we're trying to sell Ada to the wrong people -- that is, > programmers. Maybe we need to go over their heads and bend the ears > of the people in power. Sounds good to me. The employer more commonly tells the programmer what language to use (if only by hiring 'experienced C++ programmer') than vice versa. I would argue more for the robustness of Ada programs than their readability by non-programmers - a few 'limited private' and 'generic' words will convince anyone that the Ada program is not so readable. And some managers can code simple things in C, making them think they can understand any C* program. Lastly, any manager looking at the classifieds can see that he won't have any problems finding a cheap, replaceable, C programmer - can he be as confident about Ada? Marketing a language is as much a psychological or sociological undertaking as a technical or 'price of compiler' one. I believe part of C's success was its presentation as the elite language of Bell Labs, rather than the Fortran or Cobol of the unwashed. It was 'cool'. Ada 9X should be presented as the language of the new 'power elite'. We don't need people ignorant of software engineering hacking CAda just because the compiler was cheap. C was fine for small systems that could crash with little damage. Everyone agrees that it's obsolete for large systems. People are just starting to find out that replacing a C compiler with a C++ one will not solve the problem, but they need to know that Ada exists, has a proven history of getting large jobs done, and that they needn't be dependent on rare, high priced wizards for competent Ada programming.