Re: The Hobby Lobby was Windows CE?

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

>

I have read all the responses to this point regarding the
captioned topic.  Apparently, I failed to make my original
point.

A key ingredient to the success of Ada is for those of us
who are advocates to produce products using the language.
That is, we need successful software applications built in
Ada.  A company with this kind of success can lead to
others adopting it, provided they allow the public to know
that Ada has been used.

It is not very productive for us to ask others to take the risk
of entering the market with boxed set compilers, shrink-wrapped
books, etc.   Robert has succinctly, and with uncharacterisitic
gentleness (insert smiley here), made this point in his replies.

I am encouraging those people who are within my sphere of
influence to build projects using Ada.   At least one will be
presented at this week's SigAda conference.   Others have
been completed and will be published in the coming months.

We can best promote Ada, at this point, not be crowing about
how good it can be, but by demonstrating how good it is.  And
this is best done by committing our own resources to the creation
of products in the language.  After we have built and sold such
products, we can quietly remind those who admire our work that
about the role of Ada.

As not what an Ada compiler publisher can do for you.  Rather,
ask what you can do for Ada.  Of those who regular comment in
this forum, surely there are a few who have ideas for what Bill
Gates labels, "great" software products.   I hope we have not
exhausted our list of ideas for commercial products.  In fact, I
believe there is still a large number of applications that are,
either done badly and can be improved, or have not been addressed
by shrink-wrapped software at all and can be introduced.

Robert Dewar and ACT, Randy Brukhardt and RR Software, John English,
David Botton, Martin Carlisle, and many others have built Ada toolsets.
It is up to us to demonstrate that we can create marketable products using
those tools.

Richard Riehle
richard@adaworks.com