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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,447bd1cf7a88c198 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-01-04 04:08:05 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!xfer13.netnews.com!netnews.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!news.mindspring.net!not-for-mail From: Marin David Condic Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Do we need "Mission-Critical" software? Was: What to Do? Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 07:04:47 -0500 Organization: Quadrus Corporation Message-ID: <3A5466DE.811D43A5@acm.org> References: <3A4F5A4A.9ABA2C4F@chicagonet.net> <3A4F759E.A7D63F3F@netwood.net> <3A50ABDF.3A8F6C0D@acm.org> <92qdnn$jfg$1@news.huji.ac.il> <3A50C371.8B7B871@home.com> <3A51EC04.91353CE7@uol.com.br> <3A529C97.2CA4777F@home.com> <3A53CB9E.EA7CF86C@uol.com.br> NNTP-Posting-Host: d1.56.b2.fd Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Server-Date: 4 Jan 2001 12:05:17 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:3646 Date: 2001-01-04T12:05:17+00:00 List-Id: Cesar Scarpini Rabak wrote: > In a nutshell, I partially agree that to regain momentum (out of some > academic circles and specific niche markets). We need to get some > projects public interest and get them a feel of the advantages of "our" > programming environment. > Two things might help: One is more and better development tools. The other would be if there was a large institution trying to push it for purposes of their own "product distinction". Sun decided to push Java and to a large extent succeded in gaining a large part of the market. If, for example, Compaq or IBM were to make Ada an objective, they'd have enough marketing muscle to gain a nice chunk of business. Another problem still remains. Despite everyone's best efforts, there still remains a lot of perception that Ada is "A Bad Thing" based on all sorts of misconceptions and odd preferences on the part of many programmers. You just say the name and you can draw sneers of derision from many people who couldn't even recognize the syntax of the language if they saw it. Maybe a name change would help? Make Ada0x become Augusta0x? "Hey! We have this whole brandy-new programming language called 'Augusta' and it has a lot of spiffy features. Try it out!" > > The idea of games seems interesting, an OS seems to me too far fetching > (let alone FSF struggling to finish their GNU OS, a small community of > Ada programmers would be faster?). Other things we could try is to go > the FSF "todo/wishlist" and look for some production software FSF needs, > some of them although not as exciting as games or rocket control, are > still software engineering respectable projects, and if they catch the > user audience they rather be stable/robust. Two which I recall were > office related includind a general ledger program. I wonder if a Free > version of an ERP package wouldn't be more worth investing than a > competing OS. ERP is beginning to fall out of vogue. While it still exists, b-school thinking and management fad is that there are really only a handful of companies large enough to benefit from it and that the dollars in vs dollars out just aren't there to justify it. An OS would be a good thing, but I think it will just take too long to get built. It wouldn't hurt if it had a large corporate sponsor looking for that product distinction again, but who would that be? The OS would have to have some significant advantage over Windows or the computer makers will ignore it in favor of the larger market. Personally, I'd like to see an OS that was capable of running on a PC, but was suitable for realtime work. (Windows is not, which has spawned a market for add-on products that make it usable in realtime.) If it came in source code and modular pieces that made it easy to pick and choose what you wanted for an embedded product, it would have an advantage in that it could run on a PC where you could do your development & then have an easy path to the embedded machine. (The sort of direction that Lynuxworks has gone in) Business software may be a good idea, but most small businesses couldn't be bothered with anything that isn't an off-the-shelf solution (well documented!) and wouldn't want to spend any time customizing software. They either buy a box full of accounting stuff and run with whatever it does or they outsource the job to a big data processing firm. Think about the things that are most frequently used and where having open source code would be a big advantage. That's the sort of project that might make a good market for Ada. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke ======================================================================