Re: Personality Conflict was: why Ada is so unpopular ?

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

Ada might have done better with two simple overriding rules: A) Know who 
your customer is. B) Figure out how to make that customer unbelievably 
happy.

Ada bungled the job with embedded developers early on because it didn't 
pay attention to the needs of the guys in the trenches who were doing 
the job and had the ability to say to any management: "If you make me 
use Ada, I can't get the job done" (They may not have the power to 
select the language, but they sure have the veto power over a language! 
;-) In the early days it was too big, too slow, too buggy and too 
expensive - not to mention it didn't provide features that the garden 
variety embedded developer considered essential to getting the job done.

As languages go, Ada probably had more money thrown at it than any other 
language in history. It should have used some of that money on "Market 
Research".

O.K. So the pooch got screwed on that one. How to fix it now? Start with 
(A) above - figure out what market you want to address. Then go to (B) - 
Ask people in that market what they want out of a language. Maybe offer 
them some suggestions for possible new and wonderful capabilities, and 
find out what they say. Figure out what they need to get the most 
possible leverage from the language and give it to them.

That's not exactly rocket science, eh? :-)

MDC


Mike Brenner wrote:
> In addition to the responses given, on the thread "why Ada
> is so unpopular", we must remember that it never 

-- 
======================================================================
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

     "Face it ladies, its not the dress that makes you look fat.
     Its the FAT that makes you look fat."

         --  Al Bundy

======================================================================