Re: Need the Same Promotion for Ada

[Gary Scott <scottg@flash.net>]

Hi,

It seems to me that in today's market, for a language to survive and be
used in anything but a niche manner, requires making the masses aware. 
The very small numbers of people using news groups may be highly aware
of what's available (and possibly what's superior), but less than 2
percent of the 2000 or so programmers at my company are aware that Ada
is even an option for students and would never consider using it for
their personal projects, even though a significant portion of them are
required to use it at work.  They have no idea about GNAT or ADAPOWER. 
All they know is M$oft promotes the heck out of C++ and it's available
at Best Buy, CompUSA, and Fry's, and "management is forcing me to use a
dead language".  Ada is not my favorite language...but it's my second
favorite language and I could live comfortably in an Ada-dominant
world.  Ada SHOULD have a better chance of putting a dent in C++ usage
than my favorite (dead) language, but doesn't seem to be doing as well,
at least in the last 3-5 years.  I wish my favorite language well, it is
evolving well (generally well designed) considering the baggage it must
carry (albeit very very (very) slowly).  But unless something
significant changes in the way standards are developed (meaning rate of
progress), it will be perpetually 5-10 years behind where it should be. 
Ada is already "state of the art" (I obviously don't like some aspects
of it's definition of "state of the art").  I expect more marketing
(darnit)!

Michal Nowak wrote:
> 
> >http://www.compaq.com/fortran/visual/donation-program.html
> 
> There is product named Visual Ada Developer. It is available at
> http://members.nbci.com/ldulman/vad.htm
> 
> That may not be the key, because you wrote about promotion
> and it VAD page is far from compaq's. Personally, for me, it does
> not matter.
> 
> Mike Nowak


-- 

Gary Scott
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