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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,85034d1ac78a66eb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-08 08:03:54 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cambridge1-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bos-service1.ext.raytheon.com!dfw-service2.ext.raytheon.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3C88E0D1.89161C16@despammed.com> From: Wes Groleau Reply-To: wesgroleau@despammed.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en,es-MX,es,pt,fr-CA,fr MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Operating System References: <3c77b476.322111671@news.cis.dfn.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 11:03:29 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 151.168.144.162 X-Complaints-To: news@ext.ray.com X-Trace: dfw-service2.ext.raytheon.com 1015603431 151.168.144.162 (Fri, 08 Mar 2002 10:03:51 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 10:03:51 CST Organization: Raytheon Company Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20944 Date: 2002-03-08T11:03:29-05:00 List-Id: A pessimist's viewpoint: To make an operating system successful, you need at least one of - sufficient quantity of useful applications - sufficient geek appeal to attract developers. - sufficent robustness/power/features to overcome the lack of either of the others. To get people to write applications that run on it, it must have enough users to make people want to write apps for it. So you have a chicken/egg problem for the first point. For the second, you have the prevailing distaste for Ada against you ("Us" if you will). On the robustness/power/features point, obviously Ada has a significant advantage over C/C++/Java. BUT, when you multiply the language potential by the number of developers, Linux still comes out ahead. In spite of its implementation language, Linux is quite robust, and it has hundreds of developers for every AdaOS developer to keep it that way. Shift the target to features, and Microsoft will always have you beat there. They will always sacrifice security/robustness to beat any competition in features. And their "if you can't beat 'em, steal 'em" technique also applies. So on the third point, you have say a hundred developers and a language that scores ten on some arbitrary rating scale vs. several thousand developers and a language that scores one or two. Do the math and Ada loses. Unfortunately. -- Wes Groleau http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau