Nazi Java against Socialist Ada

Nazi Java against Socialist Ada

[Alexy Khrabrov]

Greetings Ada marketeers --

This is not a religious language flame, but rather
a striking parallel I felt when reading the book
"Germany: a New History" from Harvard Press.  The
idea applies to what proponents of Ada should feel
seeing Java seizing Ada's strengths and stealing
the voters base.

The same thing happened in German political
history at the demise of the Weimar Republic.  The
strongest parties were those of the Left -- SPD,
the Social Democrats, and KPD, the Communists.
They fought for the hearts of the workers among
themselves and couldn't explain or stop the Nazis.

But the workers went with the Nazis.  It puzzled
Communists ot of their minds.  Indeed, Marxist
prophecies stipulated monotonically increasing
power of the workers representatives, i.e. the
Communists themselves, until the Revolution came.

Communists invented all kinds of explanations why
the workers "betrayed their historical destiny",
including evil capitalists paying Hitler to
distract the workers from the righteous class
struggle.  (Or tagged type struggle, in Ada
parlance.)

It never occurred to them that Hitler appealed to
the emotions of the people, while Socialists and
Communists tried to ride the same old horse of
rusty reason.  In this way, Nazis were the
"coolest" party, way ahead of all others,
foreseeing the politics of the end of the century.

My suggestion: Rational, Mitre, etc., should
unite and buy TV ad space for sexy promotion of
Ada.  E.g., show a guy eating pizza at 2 am and
hastily putting together a buggy C++ contract
program due at noon.  In the next segment, show
another guy dining with a sexy woman, discussing
how easy it was for them to modularize the problem
in Ada...  :-))

Cheers,
Alexy V. Khrabrov
Department of Computer & Information Science
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Re: Nazi Java against Socialist Ada

[news.oxy.com]

Alexy Khrabrov wrote in message <7855v9$nju$1@netnews.upenn.edu>...
>
>Greetings Ada marketeers --
>

>                 ...
>
>My suggestion: Rational, Mitre, etc., should
>unite and buy TV ad space for sexy promotion of
>Ada.  E.g., show a guy eating pizza at 2 am and
>hastily putting together a buggy C++ contract
>program due at noon.  In the next segment, show
>another guy dining with a sexy woman, discussing
>how easy it was for them to modularize the problem
>in Ada...  :-))


This sounds quite reasonable!!!

I have a feeling that Ada software companies underestimate realities of the
real world/market outside the military areas.
It seems to me that they are trying to promote Ada within people that are
already Ada users or those who already consider Ada as their best choice.
But there is no needed to persuade those people to use Ada as they are
already belong to this Ada club (which in some ways resembles some kind of
close religious society).

It is necessary to promote Ada 95 outside these boarders.

There are two things that could be done in this area:

1. Developing modern set of Ada tools for enterprise IS market as discussed
in the thread Choose Ada flyer thread.

2. Advertising Ada in corporate IS market and Companies that produce
software for that market in all available media:
    There are a lot of magazines targeted for readers in this sector but I
can hardly remember
any article there promoting Ada (PC Magazine, PC week, Dr.Jobb's journal
e.t.c).
    Advertising Ada on Internet
    Advertising Ada on TV, Broadcast networks (e.g. CNN).

All the information should attract people's attention to the subject (may be
even in sexy way as described above).
People should not be forced to painfully think why Ada is better that let's
say C++ or Java. Rather they should feel that by all their sensors and
fibers. This info should sometimes bypass their consciousness and slip
directly into subconsciousness level leaving deep pleasant associations.
Most people hate when someone else is evidently trying to force them to do
something or think about something that they do not want to think or someone
is trying to change their mind. This is just human nature.
Ada and Ada tools should be felt as HOT, EXCITING thing. Only then Ada will
have success in open world.
It is not enough now to be just a perfect programming language itself.  It
should be much more.

I can recall another perfect programming language, namely Modula-3 that is
stable since beginning of 90's
(http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/modula-3/html/home.html,
 www.cmass.com ).  It was the best programming language before 1996 when
Ada95 compilers became available  (this is my private opinion and I would
not like to discuss it further - I do not want to initiate another fight
between programming clubs).
For a long time it was experimental language of the DEC Systems Research
Center (SRC). But due to that fact that it was programming language for the
close club it was not widely accepted by industry (there are some successful
stories of course  - when you call 911 just remember that your call is
processed within system written in Modula-3). And I feel deep sadness that
it did not become widespread commercial programming language.
There are some general evolution laws that can be applied to many things
(for those who wants to get a feel of that I recommend to watch Jurassica on
Discovery channel. It helps a lot to understand life in general).
Everything that confines itself within restricted boarders will never be
able to conquer the world.

Hope that Ada will overcome this.


Regards to all,
Vladimir Olensky (Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
Telecommunication specialist,
Occidental C.I.S. Service, Inc. ( www.oxy.com )
Moscow,
Russia.