Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> I have nothing against character-cell terminals & applications. I think they
> have a number of advantages such as those outlined here and elsewhere. The
> problem is that if one is looking to build a library of useful things for a
> language to offer developers that might help generate interest in the
> language, I just don't see that as a thing that should be at all at the top
> of the list. The idea ought to be to look at what changes in the industry
> are likely to need support 5 to 10 years from now and get out in front of
> that rather than look backwards and try to support development for old
> hardware. It might be useful and I wouldn't object to its existence, but I'd
> think other things ought to come first.
> 
> MDC

I don't entirely disagree with you here, but disagree on one point.

If you fail to support "essential" levels of library support,
then you will have some factors working against you.

For example, if you have
the greatest GUI support, but cannot satisfy the console support,
and console support is needed (at least some of the time)
then the greatness of the GUI support becomes somewhat irrelevant.

As an application developer who must at times
support curses type interfaces (like for console applications), if you
cannot provide this basic support for that environment, people
may look elsewhere for better overall support.  Even if they don't
plan to make extensive use of it.

Considering that text based support is rather basic, it
would seem a shame IMHO to omit this, only because it is not the
most common practice at the present time.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg