Re: Re-Marketing Ada (was "With and use")

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

Given the lack of resources and the fact that it is a mistake to try to 
be all things to all people, I'd suggest not trying to address too many 
problem domains via anything in the standard. Math is nice because it 
can be well specified in a standard, portable and stable for many years. 
Something like XML would best be addressed by a library outside of the 
standard. (But from what we've seen, the vendors have little to no 
interest in a library, so that's problematic.) A standard GUI would be a 
good thing as well, but again, the place for that is a library.

As for a name change - I don't think that would fool anyone. If you came 
up with a new language that had the basic capabilities of Ada, but did 
it in a different way, a name change would make sense. But if the syntax 
& semantics remain basically what we have now, changing the name 
wouldn't help much. Better to keep the existing name and try to do 
something to change the perception in the marketplace. "Its not your 
father's Oldsmobile..." or "Its not just for breakfast anymore..."

Basically, Ada needs to come up with some new angle that makes it "New 
and Improved" - some interesting new capability that makes it attractive 
to a segment of the market. Then it needs to get out there and sell 
itself to that segment through some visible promotion effort. But I have 
every faith that the vendors and the ARG will basically maintain the 
status quo and not much will happen to change the general trend.

MDC


Marius Amado Alves wrote:
> 
> I like that. I seem to remember that there was a PhD thesis with a lot
> of math done in Ada recently (but I lost the reference). I must restate
> also this: Ada On The Desktop = *reliable* desktop tools. And the XML
> train (Bob Leif championed). I also like the name change idea someone
> had a while ago. Let me suggest these: Xania, Xantia.
> 


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Marin David Condic
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