Re: Is the Ada World Embarrassed by the Defense Industry?

[John Magness <jmagness@swbell.net>]

Just as a matter of personal curiosity, does Rational provide any cross
compilers for  processors commonly used for real time embedded systems?
Which chips?
John.
ps.  Does Rational have a version of Apex/Ada95 suitably priced for the
home user?
i.e. Why can't I buy a shrink wrapped Rational/Apex/Ada 95 ( and other
languages)
like I can for Code Warrior, Visual C++, and the former Borland products at
CompUSA ?  One of the reasons that C, C++ and Java are popular is that
students (and schools) can purchase compilers with decent IDEs at a low
price.  But of course this would put Rational in direct competition with
Microsoft, threatening any existing mutual business relationships.
John.

mark_lundquist@my-deja.com wrote:

> In article <3A031100.68F2B59@netwood.net>,
>   "E. Robert Tisdale" <edwin@netwood.net> wrote:
> > mark_lundquist@my-deja.com wrote:
> >
> > > I think COTS is a natural area to focus on for growing the Ada
> market.
> >
> > Perhaps.
> > But Ada programmers don't appear to be interested.
>
> What would it mean for Ada programmers to be interested in growing the
> Ada market in the COTS segment?  How would that growth area depend on
> Ada programmers being interested?  (Seems more to depend upon the
> interest of those who would *pay* Ada programmers :-)
>
> > No Ada programmers have expressed an interest
> > in an Ada language binding for the VSIPL API standard.
> > I don't think that a single Ada programmer has ever participated
> > in the discussion on the VSIPL Form web page
> >
> >     http://www.vsipl.org/
>
> I can envision a number of possible reasons why that might be, so
> without knowing anything about it, it's hard for me to draw any
> conclusions...
>
> You've got to admit that vector processing is a somewhat narrow
> specialty, though.
>
> > Ada programmers don't appear to be much interested
> > in numerical computing at all.
>
> I would say that programmers in general are not interested in numerical
> computing!  Most of computing is not numerics.  (Nothing against it...)
>
> You seem to be in a double-minority: deeply interested in numerics and
> vector processing, and also an Ada advocate :-)
>
> > I don't think that anyone uses Ada for numerical computing anymore.
> > There are, at best, only some adapter interfaces
> > for numerical libraries written in Fortran and/or C.
>
> What would you like to see in the way of Ada support for numeric
> computing?
>
> > I think that many people in the military believe that
> > they have been abandoned by the Ada community.
>
> Interesting... what kind of support do you think these people in the
> military would have wanted to have from the "Ada community"?  (Are you
> talking about Ada vendors here, third-party tool vendors, or what?)
>
> I work for Rational Software in the Ada products group, and have for a
> long time -- way back for Verdix Corp. and then w/ Rational when the
> two companies merged.  I was a developer until 1-1/2 years ago, then
> moved to a developer role in a different part of Rational's business
> for about a year, then went back to the Ada products group, now as part
> of the product management team.  So I'm very interested in what people
> think the Ada vendors ought to be doing, different perspectives on the
> Ada market, where it's going and how to grow it, etc.
>
> Mark Lundquist
> Rational Software
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.