Re: Who's using Ada in industry?

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

Michael Feldman wrote:
> Niklas Holsti wrote:
> 
>> Michael Feldman wrote:
>>>
>>> After several years of inactivity with the Ada project list,
>>> I've started to maintain it actively again.
>>
>> If SW tool 
>> projects were listed under their own heading -- perhaps as the last 
>> group -- they should not detract from the impact of the other projects 
>> on the list.
> 
> Done - see below.

Thanks for adding this category. Although perhaps you shouldn't 
have, since (as you explain later) you had good reason to omit it 
in the first place.

>> Perhaps only large, expensive 
>> projects are wanted? In that case it would be clearer to say so.
>>
> Niklas makes a good point, so let me explain a bit further. I'm a 
> (now-retired) college professor with no personal connection at all to 
> any of these projects, and CERTAINLY no interest in pushing big, 
> expensive projects over small ones. I'm not a spokesman for any big 
> industry!

Michael, if my comment was offensive, I apologize, it was not meant 
to be. (I had been looking at my bank balance and feeling a bit 
green, perhaps it came through in the wording :-)

There would be nothing wrong with a list that included only big, 
expensive Ada projects. Ada compiler vendors need such projects, 
and companies choosing a language for a big, expensive SW project 
are obviously more influenced if they see Ada being used in similar 
big, expensive projects, than they are by small Ada projects.

> I've been maintaining this project list -- off and on and off, now 
> definitely on again -- for a number of years. During the years before 
> that, and since, I've heard from friends in the industry that in order 
> to promote Ada they needed to hear about applications -- "killer apps, 
> if possible:-) -- in real, operating, systems.
> 
> They thought it was nice that this or that library or IDE or code 
> analyzer was written in Ada, but these tools are "self-referential" in 
> the sense that they are written by developers for developers. So I 
> concluded that I shouldn't focus on tools but rather on fielded apps for 
> people other than software developers.

Ok, I understand better now. If that is what the audience of this 
list wants, that is what they should get.

> That said, your suggestion to add a tool section to the list is a good 
> one and I will do that. Niklas, please send me info on yours.

Fine, I will (and I will prompt the other company that I mentioned 
to send you their info, too). But I do now understand your initial 
exclusion of such projects, so feel free to go back to your 
original definition of the list.

If you do exclude some projects, perhaps it would be a good idea to 
explain the project selection rules in the introduction to the 
list? Sort of suggesting that this is only a selected sample of the 
vast mass of Ada applications out there :-)

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .