From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 11232c,877ba3d67e73c6c3 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac39a12d5faf5b14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-13 07:20:35 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community Date: 13 Apr 2002 07:20:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0204130620.114953ae@posting.google.com> References: <3CB46975.90408@snafu.de> <5ee5b646.0204121930.64733eeb@posting.google.com> <5wTt8.15598$C21.3515342@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1018707635 29529 127.0.0.1 (13 Apr 2002 14:20:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 13 Apr 2002 14:20:35 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:22485 misc.misc:6285 Date: 2002-04-13T14:20:35+00:00 List-Id: "martin.m.dowie" wrote in message news:<5wTt8.15598$C21.3515342@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com > Shame - could have been the most significant announcement > on this newsgroup for the last 5 years... We have no plans to do anything with .NET and GNAT so far, since there has been absolutely zero significant interest in such a product (postings on CLA I am sorry to say do not register as significant interest). In fact the lack of interest is surprising, we have not even had enquiries on this topic. Needless to say, our assessment of significance is somewhat different from yours :-) It's all a bit reminiscent of two things in the past. Big chorus of people interested in GNAT for the Mac. But no significant interest emerged. Yes, there is a volunteer effort to keep GNAT alive on the Mac for the enthusiastic few :-) which is great, and one of the respects in which the Free Software approach is attractive. Big chorus (backed up by DoD money) of people interested in an Ada compiler generating code for the JVM. But only marginal interest emerged, so that port is now on terminal life support from us. Perhaps a significant volunteer effort will arise there too, but so far no sign of it. Now on the other hand interest in IDE's -- that's real indeed, and that is where we are putting a lot of effort these days. Perhaps .NET will emerge as significant, perhaps not. Hard to say. I think those who imagine that Ada for .NET will somehow spark new interest in Ada are indulging in wishful thinking. For me, the most interesting avenue for getting more people interested in Ada is to concentrate on things that will appeal to this generation of CS students who are working with Free Software extensively. Hint: anything to do with Microsoft does NOT appeal to students these days, who routinely refer to Microsoft as the "dark side", a phenomenon that I think MS should be paying far more attention too :-) Many of my students are shocked to see me using Windows XP these days. But of course there *is* significant interest in GNAT running under XP, so that's a different matter entirely :-)