Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

[Gary Scott <scottg@flash.net>]

Bill Tate wrote:
> 
> Michael Erdmann <Michael.Erdmann@snafu.de> wrote in message
> > > If we had some community concensus that one or more libraries was what we
> [snip]
> > > wanted for doing job X, all you'd have to do is persuade the vendors to
> > > distribute it with their compilers and it instantly becomes part of Ada even
> > > if it isn't part of the "standard".
> >
> > I dont think that we need the vendors this mutch, most of the popular
> > open source software is distributed without them (thanks to sites
> > as sourceforge etc..),
> >
> > In my mind the idea of a public ada process is showing up:
> >
> > - There is a job to be done and i have some solution for it. Propose
> >    the solution to the community (who is this, i gues comp.lang.ada?)
> >
> > - If sufficient interest has been raised, form a working group
> >    for this topic and provide an implemenation for public use.
> >
> > - Proceed until wide acceptance
> >
> > - Propose to ISO
> >
> Michael,
> I would like to echo some of your points from an outsider's
> perspective.  As someone who spends most of his time on
> comp.lang.python, Python suffers from some of the same "kinds" of
> perceptions (erroneous or otherwise) as Ada does, e.g., degree of
> acceptance, availability of developers, etc.  

At least python has gobs (a technical term) of books available in the
local book store and seems to be getting plenty of attention from the
media and academia.  Then consider Fortran 95.  There are virtually no
advertisements, no magazine articles (maybe one / year in Dr Dobbs), no
books stocked in your local book store, etc. yet there are still
somewhere between 5 and 10 commercial developers for x86 plugging away
successfully.  There are at least 4 fortran.net products in development
for x86.  Virtually every hardware vendor provides a Fortran compiler
(Intel just bought Visual Fortran and is now merging with its own
compiler (more or less)).  It is still a niche language but has
dramatically improved its general purpose utility and isn't likely to
die anytime soon.  It does this largely following the slow, cumbersome
ANSI/ISO standard development process.  I only wish REXX would get on
the ball.

> However, Python does
> have considerable "traction" and "energy" in terms of its direction
> and the process for moving new features into its standard "core."
> While ISO adoption isn't part of the python agenda, the Python
> Evaluation Process (PEP) seems to fill the bill that your comments
> suggest.  A specific PEP garners no shortage of posts from the
> devoted.  Wide-spread use including version updates most often lead to
> incorporation into the standard distribution.  Its the latter that
> seems to be the threshold that needs to be achieved for widespread
> community acceptance.  WRT Ada and the ISO process, this would seem to
> be, at least, one logical jumping off point since many of the
> "important" battles would likely have already been fought and
> resolved.  Information on the PEP process is available from
> www.python.org.  Hopefully you wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel
> (too much) in order to adopt a process that would work for your
> community instead of the other way around - like the python language
> itself, this is something that borders on religious dogma in the
> python community. Hopefully this is of some use.
> cheers,
> Bill


-- 

Gary Scott
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