Re: Ada used in General Aviation (GA) applications?

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

Richard Riehle wrote:
 >
 > "We will only build a product if someone asks for it," is not a
 > particularly good business strategy.   One can keep a company alive,
 > for a while, using that strategy, but it is not a sustainable
 > posture.   Entrepreneurs are constantly trying to find new markets,
 > not simply cling to existing ones.
 >

 From what I can see, most of the Ada vendors are sitting in the
background with Ada and selling what they can sell, but looking to other
ventures as their future. I can sympathize with the attitude of "We're
driven by what our customers want..." but here's the flaw: It keeps your
ever dwindling customer base happy with you while finding ABSOLUTELY NO
*NEW* business. (Unless, of course, you're getting out of the Ada 
business - which then makes you irrelevant to the discussion at hand.)

How many people currently use Ada in real-world development jobs? 1%?
5%? Whatever it is - its *not* a big number. What is Ada going to do to
try to persuade the 95%-99% of the developers out there that they should
use Ada? All the arguments we've been hearing for years about long term
costs and reliability and such just have *not* sold. So the vendors and
the Ada fans can all go home grumbling about how stupid the general
computing public is and watch Ada die, or they can try to get
*innovative* and find a way to attract some *NEW* business.





 > There have been a few examples of risk takers in the Ada industry.
 > RR Software comes to mind.  Meridian comes to mind.   OC Systems.
 > There are a few others.  The fact that these have not been a
 > resounding success has acted as a deterrent for others.

Some of it is an issue of resources. It can take a lot of cash to
promote a technology. But if individual entrepreneurial companies can't
do it on their own, they can consider that a rising tide raises all
ships and band together to take some joint action. Go off and develop
some strategy for getting Ada adopted in a more lucrative area and then
stay focused on that strategy. I don't know why the vendors don't get
together and pool some resources to try to advance Ada technology
because at this point its going down the tubes and going to take them
*all* out of business. Perhaps they just figure they're migrating to
selling other technology and don't really care if Ada has any future.





 >
 > Marin is correct when he suggests that the only way to make Ada
 > successful is for people to being creating products that use it.  We
 > can whine about the fact that more people are not choosing it, we can
 > complain about the stupidity of the LM management on JSF, we can
 > wring our hands about the downside of abrogating the mandate.   None
 > of that is worth much.    What is worth a lot is for those who know
 > and love Ada to build commercial products using it.  Sell your
 > shrink-wrapped Ada application to the general marketplace.  Let
 > people know you used Ada for development. Once we have those kind of
 > successes, Ada can stand on its own and will be recognized for the
 > value it actually provides.
 >


Amen! Amen! and Amen! Every time I hear someone here blaming it all on
the "stupidity of managers" or "DoD Contractor greed" or "The hacker 
mentality that likes debugging" or any number of other excuses, I 
cringe. We could debate the truth or falsity of those excuses forever. 
Let's assume they're all 100% true. How does that get Ada adopted 
anywhere that matters? How many Ada programming jobs does that create? 
If its all true and the conclusion is that its all hopeless, then let's 
just put Ada in a coffin, bury her in the ground and get off this 
newsgroup and go talk about something that has a future.

If nobody does anything entrepreneurial with Ada, then there are no Ada 
jobs, students will consider learning Ada a waste of their time, big 
companies like LockMart will see Ada as a niche language that nobody 
uses and not worth their time/money to adopt, managers will perceive it 
as too big a risk and too high a cost to use on their projects, Ada 
vendors have nobody to sell support contracts to, etc., etc., etc.

The reason Ada is dying is because nobody is off building 
entrepreneurial products with it. All the "free" software in the world 
will not make Ada a hit if there isn't somewhere along the line some 
revenue with which to cut paychecks and purchase Ada vendor support, 
right? So dream up an end product that might have a market and in which 
Ada can play a role in making it a success. When that product is selling 
and generating revenue, Ada gets some life breathed back into it.

MDC


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Marin David Condic
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