Ada magazine

[s0222353@moncol.monmouth.edu (DEAN RUNZEL)]

I have a question for the Ada community and the vendors. Has anyone ever
seriously considered starting a magazine with a primarily Ada orientation?
Recently, while in my local Barnes and Knoble (?) bookstore, I saw tons of
computer oriented magazines. There are special magazines for operating 
systems, virtual reality, home PC users, multimedia, and even one devoted
entirely to Internet computing.

Now, the bad news. There were at least three magazines dealing almost 
exclusively with C/C++ and even one devoted entirely to SmallTalk. Now
if SmallTalk can have a magazine on the shelves of a major bookstore chain,
why can't Ada?

Surely, the Ada gurus, (Mr. Feldman, Mr. Cohen, etc.) could write the 
education and technical articles. Mr. Taft could write the detailed language
articles. The Ada community would have a more natural forum to post Ada 
success stories. Students at the universities could contribute their work.
Interesting university student programming contests could be sponsored.
We could even poke (pun intended) a little fun at C/C++.

This has to be as cheap as constantly updating and distributing the CD-ROM
and managers are more likely to pick up a magazine off of my desk than to
ask to see my CD. Remember, not everyone has a CD-ROM computer but most
people have two eyes (No insult to my visually-impaired friends intended).

Can't someone see the logic of this? Would AJPO be willing to help?

If such a magazine were available would you subscribe? How much would you 
be willing to pay? Would you be willing to contribute articles on a regular
basis? Would you be willing to leave it on a prominent corner of your
desk?

Now that the hard part of getting a new standard is edone, let's let Ada
loosen her corset a little and have some fun!! How about some of the 
university professors having students write some fun stuff like games or 
really neat windows editors in Ada? Part of the problem is everyone thinks 
Ada is too technical. We've got something new and exciting. Let's PARTY!!

This is just my opinion, but let's stop being so stuffy and whining so much.
Let's stop spending time on me vs. you and devote our collective energy
to getting more exposure for Ada. Let's get a magazine, attend more non-
Ada conferences, encourage more students to write and submit Ada-based
papers to other conferences and stop just sitting behind our terminals and
complaining about the exposure C/C++ is getting.

Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of Ada!

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate your comments.
Dean Runzel