Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

[Tom Robinson <robinson@gdesystems.com>]

>
>As an anecdote, there are several users who have found that 
>the biggest expense in porting from Ada 83 to Ada 95 is the inevitable
>expense in porting from front-end to front-end, not in accommodating 83=>95 
>language changes.
>

I certainly agree with this!

> Having lots of front ends out there is not 
>necessarily a "good thing" given limited overall resources...
>

And, all I have been saying is that time will tell.  I simply believe that
it is too early to start proclaiming that between Adamagic and Gnat we now
have a much better situation today than we did under Ada 83.

I guess I'm just a little cynical.  I still remember sitting through many
company meetings of a now defunct Ada vendor and hearing all the marketing 
hype about how Ada was going to be the next dominant programming language.
(I think at the time it was being compared to Cobol -- at least from a
language market share standpoint).  The net result of alot of this hype was
that many private investors put up money to fund Ada 83 development.  Many
computer manufacturers also put up money to make sure that Ada was available
on their platforms.  And we now have a situation where many of those companies
are gone and many of those manufacturers are getting out.

But, I am ready to be pleasantly suprised :)

Tom Robinson