Re: Ada and Mac (Was: New version of AppletMagic)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <JSA.96Oct10134957@alexandria>,
Jon S Anthony <jsa@alexandria> wrote:

>And that's just fine.  What would seem like the more sensible road
>here would be to put together a Thomson style deal (where ObjectAda
>uses the AdaMagic frontend, but Thomson BE, IDE, etc).  This has
>produced one of the (maybe _the_) most impressive Ada offering to
>date.  Question is, who is the Thomson equivalent for the Mac in such
>a scenario???

There is none; that is the problem. Thomson is an "Ada company."
The Ada companies (Thomson, Rational, Intermetrics) look at the Mac 
and say "nah, small market." 

Both Thomson (well, its predecessor Alsys) and Rational had acceptable 
(if not stellar) Ada 83 compilers for 68k Macs under MPW, and both 
companies walked away from their products. 

At least Rational (well, its predecessor Meridian) _tried_ to sell 
the Mac compiler. I think it was ahead of its time - on the Macs
of 5 or so years ago, the Ada compiler was just real clunky, though
I know several enthusiasts (including current members of the GNAT-Mac
team:-)) who got good use out of it and were annoyed at the lack
of incremental investment to keep it up to date.

Alsys, as far as I can tell, never really tried to sell its Mac compiler.
I'm reasonably plugged in to things happening in the Ada community, and
I found out about its existence only by accident. I think Alsys gave
up even before they gave it their best marketing shot. Maybe it, too,
was ahead of its time.

The Mac companies (Symantec, MetroWerks) look at Ada and say
"nah, small market." And therein lies the deadly embrace.

Part of the intent of the Academic Ada contract was to break the
deadlock by using some government dollars to seed the development of 
a proprietary, commercialized, Ada 95 compiler for the Mac (and for 
Win 95, but that's not at issue here). Intermetrics won the contract,
but then (apparently) looked at the Mac and said "nah, small market,"
got the government to agree to a contract mod, and walked away from
the Mac. 

Something will have to happen to dispel the perception on both sides
that this is not a worthwhile market to enter. I happen to think the
GNAT-MachTen development has a decent chance of doing this. Indeed,
some government dollars (an ATIP-P contract) are being used to kick-
start the process. The government money, coupled with at least an
equal amount of volunteer time (the government calls it cost-sharing)
has actually made it happen this time. 

The compiler and toolbox binding exist now (3.05 is on the usual servers
with 3.07 on the way); the MachTen folks are enthusiastic about the 
prospects. Maybe we are finally breaking the logjam.
>
>/Jon
>-- 
Mike Feldman