Re: Standard Library Interest? (The Big Player ACT)

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Stephane Richard wrote:
> 
> *** I think here, we need to make a difference between what ACT expects of

I can't possibly speak for what ACT expects, but I know what *I* would 
expect if *I* was spending money to buy a library with which to program. 
  I have not seen any of the all-volunteer, freebie libraries meet those 
expectations - although they could be made to do so. It just takes a lot 
of effort and resources.

> 
> *** Again here, the laws of Offer and Demand are at hand.  if they can't do
> nothing else but provide Charles library because of Demand, and regular
> impatience of the typical customer, they might be more flexible on
> standards.  They do want it well documented, but they dont seem to have the
> same vision of documentation if they have to look outside the ARG at least
> not as per the phone conversation.

I am very hip to the concept of Supply and Demand - something too many 
people are uneducated about and hence they make bad decisions in most 
aspects of life. Obviously, if everyone who was a supported customer of 
ACT started calling in saying "I'd like to see Charles bundled with the 
GNAT compiler and I'd like to see it extended and built on as a library 
of lots of useful things..." then ACT would get on the job and have it 
there.

But as we've discussed before, there isn't a consensus because "The 
Customer" isn't entirely sure what he wants. He wants *something* - just 
not sure if that's Charles of Booch or Grace or take your pick. That's 
why if a vendor like ACT said "Here's the compiler and here's Charles 
with it and here's a bunch of things we built on top of Charles...." 
then perhaps the customer would settle on that. Its Freedom FROM choice 
the customer wants.

>>
> 
> *** In my case, I gladly switched to Ada and I didn't care about hypertexted
> documents...sure that's me, and I couldn't tell you I'm part of the majority
> or not, but I'm not the only one.  However I do see your point.  Would it be
> enough to drive away programmers?  well not in my case, but I can imagine
> that the answer woudl have to be yes (at least to most new comers to the
> programming world....when I started programming (1976) hyperlinks and such
> didn't even appear in sci-fi movies yet...so I gladly welcomed a good book
> over no books at all :-).
> 
I was talking to a friend at a major jet engine company that programs 
their controls in Ada. His best guess is that when the next major engine 
control comes around, it will not be in Ada but in C or C++. Does he 
hate Ada? No. Nor does the company that's using it - generally speaking. 
But when they have all sorts of work beyond simply writing up the code 
and there are major uncertainties about supporting targets 30 years into 
the future, they want something with widespread industry support. They 
don't see "Widespread Industry Support" surrounding Ada.

What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to say "We're so much in 
love with Ada that we'll go it alone and totally fund our own 
micro-software-industry that makes compilers, debuggers, CM tools, IDEs, 
training courses, etc..." There is ENORMOUS pressure on a program that 
has to go on for 30+ years to figure out how they're going to deal with 
changes in technology. If they start with something robust and 
widespread in use, there's a good chance it will last or there will be 
migration paths. If they start with something that's already gasping for 
breath and barely hanging on, what's the risk to the program if it 
totally dies?

That's why I'm saying that Ada desperately needs to take some bold 
actions to get its installed base of users up. Lots of companies 
currently using Ada are in that boat of asking what technology is the 
"going forward" answer and Ada isn't it. Ada has to come up with 
something new and exciting - like a *MASSIVE* library - that is going to 
get lots more users out there hacking things together and lots more 
*profitable* businesses out there creating & supporting Ada/Ada-related 
products or the game is over. And it *can't* be something small, slow to 
emerge, and of inconsistent quality like just about anything that is 
going to be built by an all-volunteer, freebie project. If Ada's life 
depends on a handful of guys doing some spare-time hacking to produce 
something, then she might as well put in a call to Dr. Kevorkian and get 
the inevitable over with.

MDC

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Marin David Condic
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     "So if I understand 'The Matrix Reloaded' correctly, the Matrix is
     basically a Microsoft operating system - it runs for a while and
     then crashes and reboots. By design, no less. Neo is just a
     memory leak that's too hard to fix, so they left him in... The
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         --  Marin D. Condic
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