Re: The Hobby Lobby was Windows CE?

[Gary Scott <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com>]

Hi,

But is it even necessary to get it onto store shelves.  Visual Fortran
95 from Compaq/Intel isn't in any stores that I'm aware of and it's
selling like hot cakes (estimate about 100 copies at my site alone).

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> A fair observation. As I said, the first part of the problem is *relatively*
> easy and simply requires the application of large amounts of money. We could
> clearly get a consumer-oriented Ada development environment constructed and
> we could clearly get it into stores alongside MSVC++. How much money is
> involved and would it generate sufficient return are fair questions, but it
> is at least feasable.
> 
> The hard part, as I noted, would be to overcome the reticence of software
> types to adopt Ada as their language of implementation. Too many people have
> a bad attitude towards Ada (although I think this is diminishing) and too
> many programmers want something that looks & feels like C and dislike Ada
> because of its strictness, etc. Could a consumer oriented product with an
> appropriate advertising campaign overcome these attitudes? Would the cost of
> doing so exceed the profits to be reaped?
> 
> As for ObjectAda failing in the consumer market, I'll say this: I bought a
> copy of it several years ago on company funds and it ran about $700. If I
> had to pay for it out of my own pocket with no particular purpose in mind
> beyond casual hacking at home, I wouldn't (and didn't). That's a pretty
> steep price tag for the student or casual hacker who has to work for a
> living. There were other problems with it, but I think the chief one was the
> price was a bit beyond the consumer market.
> 
> Suppose something similar was available for a price tag of under $100? For
> your money, you got a disk, a couple of manuals, a book, and an e-mail
> address to answer installation/startup problems. (There shouldn't ought to
> be any installation problems!) For an additional fee, you could subscribe to
> a service that allowed you to report bugs & get quarterly updates. A kit
> such as this would be within the reach of the consumer and would provide a
> sufficient level of support for the average user. That *might* stand a
> chance of succeeding. ObjectAda messed up in terms of the consumer's
> reservation price and in some technical ways as well.
> 
> Now is there a marketing model that would let you circumvent the
> brick-and-mortar stores that would demand you pay them for shelf space?
> That's tough. They can demand the price because that shelf space is of huge
> value to you. The guy who is scanning the shelves to find some computer game
> sees your compiler kit and makes an impulse buy. (That's why you *must* have
> the price low enough to overcome any "Let me go home and think about
> spending that kind of money..." thoughts.) The internet might be a useful
> way of distributing the kit, but how do you get that exposure to the
> consumer who doesn't read C.L.A?
> 
> I'd love to hear any ideas anyone had about it, but this problem is not
> unique to Ada and there are lots of dotcoms that became dotgones trying to
> figure it out.
> 
> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Senior Software Engineer
> Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> Enabling the digital revolution
> e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/
> 
> "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
> news:RBrs7.6406$ev2.11556@www.newsranger.com...
> >
> > You also have to pay out the proper bri^H^H^Henducements to retailers if
> you
> > hope to put physical copies on store shelves. That's one of the things
> that
> > tripped up OA.
> >
> > I'd think a study of how the Linux resellers got into this market would be
> in
> > order.
> >