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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-19 19:23:08 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!nntpserver.pppl.gov!princeton!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!darwin.sura.net!gwu.edu!gwu.edu!not-for-mail From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Array mappings Date: 19 Dec 1994 22:23:08 -0500 Organization: George Washington University Message-ID: <3d5ims$7gv@felix.seas.gwu.edu> References: <9412061309.AA02026@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> <3cv7t2$no2@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> <3d2pia$pcu@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <3d2ve2$pig@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.164.9.3 Date: 1994-12-19T22:23:08-05:00 List-Id: In article <3d2ve2$pig@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, Robert Dewar wrote: >Mike, I know you enjoy vendor bashing, but let's keep facts straignt (and >this particular point is one I have made before). You DEFINITELY cannot >say that Alsys was "fixated" on the DoD market when it was first formed. Well, if what I was doing was "bashing" the vendors (though I prefer to see it as trying to goad them into action), I suppose Alsys can be excluded (I'll take your word for it). >For years, it agressively persued the non-DoD market, and please note that >there is not very much US DoD business in France, where Alsys had some >considerable success in penetrating various application fields. Absolutely. Alsys and Rational and others have had greater success in Europe than over here. Most of the non-DoD "success stories" - at least the ones that are discussed openly enough to publish - have been European ones. (Avionics is, I think, the exception - that's been a success story everywhere.) > >Indeed, Jean always thought of Ada as a general purpose language with >possible application to a wide variety of fields. Some people even >criticized Jean for not being sufficiently concentrated on the US DoD >market! But did he pursue the _non-DoD_ US market as aggressively as over in Europe? It's conceivable that he did, but not much has resulted (unless the real non-DoD stories are "under wraps", which is certainly possible). >As for your question of what is more important than the array ordering >matter, I would say two things: > Realiability and maturity (note the posting we already saw on this issue) > Performance. This is a really tough one, Fortran compilers typically have > been squeezed furiously on performance of numerical loops, and are where > you find the most aggressive optimization of this type of code. The > effort of competing in code quality with mature optimizing Fortran > compilers was and is huge and very expensive. I wouldn't claim to be an optimization expert, but I have the impression that those "squeezing" algorithms and heuristics are pretty much language-independent. Am I right on this? And is it not the case that e.g. Ada's clear and highly-regulated FOR statement might even make such optimizations easier for Ada? >You keep saying that what you want to be sure is that vendors did extensive >market surveys of this part of the market. I don't know how much business >experience you have, but this is the sort of thing that is often recommended >by people without such experience. Well, obviously eyes, ears, common sense, and 30 years in computing only take me so far, but in fact these are all I have. Not much business experience, I'll admit. >THe fact of the matter is that meaningful >surveys of markets are VERY difficult and VERY expensive. The trick in a >market like the Ada market is to be able to guess where to go WITHOUT blowing >huge amounts of capital in studies like this that do not turn out to be >useful. My business naivete may be showing again, but if this is the case, it might've been effective for the vendors to pool their marketing (as opposed to sales) dollars. That is the theory behind this Ada 9X-sponsored _marketing_ campaign - to raise awareness of potential untapped market sectors. But an association of vendors could do that without federal dollars. It would have been in everyone's interest to do so, by the "rising tide lifts all boats" theory. Is it naive to contemplate a market survey done by a group of companies that set aside their competitive instincts long enough to do this? Clearly the government's intent is to turn this stuff over to the newly-formed ARA. Will ARA pick up the ball and run with it? Back to the point. So have the successful software companies just been lucky? Maybe _no_ company whose only or main products are compilers and surrounding tools can be _really_ successful, because there are only a relatively small number of developers. The real money is in end-user products, I guess. >My own feeling is that the performance issue was so central at the time, >that there was little chance for Ada to make serious headway (one of the >problems with the Cray compiler was that, espeically early on, it was a >little bit less efficient than Fortran). Well, I guess it's hard for immature Ada compilers to compete with mature Fortran ones. Yet, if indeed engineers are moving to C, the C compilers must be efficient enough to meet their needs. >As to why numerical people are moving to C, it is partly because they are >moving to work stations where C is perceived as part of the general >environment, and yes, I do think this represents an opportunity! OK, let's go for it! Mike Feldman