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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,60e2922351e0e780 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-11-17 04:06:45 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!207.69.154.101.MISMATCH!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3FB8B9BC.5040505@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Re-Marketing Ada (was "With and use") References: <3FB0B57D.6070906@noplace.com> <3FB22125.1040807@noplace.com> <3FB3751D.5090809@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:06:30 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.2.245 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1069070790 209.165.2.245 (Mon, 17 Nov 2003 04:06:30 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 04:06:30 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2564 Date: 2003-11-17T12:06:30+00:00 List-Id: I think they *know* about it, but they are not much interested in teaching a language that appears to be on the decline if not exactly "dead". They want to be able to prepare students for the kinds of things they'll likely see when they get out in industry and don't want to teach something that might be perceived as of purely academic interest with no practical use. It would help if Ada had something *new* to offer or could become "The Language To Use" in some specific field of study. Illustration: Robotics or Mathematics. If Ada provided something new or aimed to somehow address & take over one of those fields, you might see some academic interest start to grow. Its a marketing decision that the keepers of Ada would have to agree to take. You'd do it by providing some kind of specific support for the field of interest and try to get some books & programs built to address it. Send out lots of free copies of books with software & promotional stuff saying "Ada is now aiming at being The New Fortran for mathematical programming..." or something like that. At the risk of bringing up the subject of a library again, it *would* be an easy way to try to promote Ada to the mathematical crowd. Ada already has really good support for math and if it came with something more than your average log and trig functions, it might really be able to target mathematicians with things they can't get elsewhere. Math is also easy to add in a portable way since it is capable of being rigorously defined much more easily than many other areas. Some heavy duty math capabilities, coupled with things Ada already has (tasking and distribution come to mind - what if Ada solved really big math problems in parallel very easily?) might be enough to start luring math researchers into using it. MDC Chad R. Meiners wrote: > I have a feeling that if Ada were taught in more universities in the US, Ada > would experience a growth of popularity. It is hard to go back to other > programming language after Ada because you start missing all of its > features. Of course this just switches the question to "how do we get the > word out about Ada to educators" ;-| > > -CRM > > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "Trying is the first step towards failure." -- Homer Simpson ======================================================================