Ada saved by gnat (was Re: Where's Aetech?)

[tmoran@bix.com]

>Funding GNAT was an extremely cost-effective way to boost the number
>of Ada programmers.
And how much money was spent on market research to find what sort of
customers currently use Ada vs C, why, and what might cause them to
change (in either direction)?

>Without GNAT, there would have been no widely available compiler that
>implemented Ada 95 features for the past 18 months.  AETech's
>compiler was Intel/DOS or Intel/POSIX only, and was not FTP-able by
>the new generation of Internet junkies.

What fraction of potential Ada customers (ie programmers) use
Intel/DOS or Windows 3.1 vs OS2, NT, Sun, SGI, etc?

For what fraction is a multi-meg FTP more convenient than diskettes?

What fraction have heard that Ada produces huge executables after
long compile times, and does Gnat remove those fears?

What fraction have heard that Ada is good for real time work - and
what do they think when Barne's suggested code style

delay 2*Hours+40*Minutes;

gives compilation errors at columns 9 and 18 for '*'?

When programmers try to get their feet wet with Ada by writing a
real program, which is more important: Ada 95 features; or
convenient OS interface and debugging tools?

Of the world's population of programmers, what fraction has tried
Gnat?  What fraction potentially could try it?  Of those who have
downloaded Gnat or bought the CDROM, what fraction has reported a
bug, asked a question, or otherwise indicated continuing use?