Re: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

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

Success breeds success. Advertising is a good idea but you have to have 
something to advertise with and about. That would be money and success. 
There are ways of getting attention on a product that don't necessarily 
involve lots of money, but I'd suggest that the absolute *best* way is 
to make some end products using Ada and successfully show that you did 
it with less cost and to better quality. Some real-world software 
product with an "Ada Inside" sticker on it that is selling like hotcakes 
because it works better and costs less is going to do far more for 
raising Ada's image than all the ads in all the journals in the world.

Or is it that Ada just doesn't bring enough advantage to a development 
effort and it wouldn't show on the bottom line? If that's true then we 
should all shut up about the "stupid" managers who pick other more 
popular languages. Either Ada pays or it doesn't. If it pays, then why 
not make it pay *us*?

We've got to quit trying to persuade the current 
language-decision-makers and *become* the language-decision-makers. 
That's done by building our own products in Ada and being successful 
with them.

MDC


Richard Riehle wrote:
> 
> 
> Sadly, there is no money available in the Ada community for advertising
> or public relations.   The money we did have was squandered on silly
> posters and ineffective advertising about the time Ada 95 appeared.  The
> people charged with making the advertising decisions were inexperienced
> in the ways of advertising and the ads had no appreciable effect.
> 
> Advertising is not a bad approach, but it needs to be done by people who
> understand the product, the audience, and the mission.  It also needs to be
> done by people who understand how to make an impact with advertising.
> Just as there are lots of ineffective software managers, there is no
> shortage
> of stupid advertising executives.   To paraphrase Einstein, the two things
> without boundary are space and human stupidity.
> 
> Actually Per, your idea sparks an image that might be an interesting Ad if
> there were money for it.    A group of people sitting in a conference room,
> a whiteboard with the words Java, C++, C#, and Eiffel written on it, and
> someone in the meeting asking, "Why not just use Ada?"
> 
> Such an ad, place in the right journals would spark the debate once again,
> if it were widely enough published.
> 
> But then, we have wasted all our money and resources on useless stuff so
> there
> is none left to produce such an ad.
> 
> Richard Riehle
> 
> 


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Marin David Condic
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