From: mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn)
Subject: Re: how to make Ada more popular?
Date: 1999/01/25
Date: 1999-01-25T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <78gfid$pra$2@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 78g1n8$9dr$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com
One way of making Ada more popular might look a bit strange
at first, but is much cheaper than sexy TV adverts:
Just rename Ada into something else.
Every kid in the computing world seems to know that "Ada is
the much too complex 1970s DoD language that nobody uses". We
know that this is not true, but marketing experts will tell you
that this is completely irrelevant. The name Ada has unfortunately
a not too exciting reputation associated with it.
I have noticed that people are not impressed if I tell them
that I program my PhD project in Ada95. I have therefore started
to tell them: "I program my PhD project in GNAT, a cool new,
efficient, and secure OO programing language for which there
is a high-quality GNU development kit available on the Internet".
Wow. People are now impressed! People want to know more about it!
Pascal is now called Delphi. Well, then Ada is now called GNAT.
The fact that the GNAT programming environment also happens to
pass the Ada95 validation suite is just one of its long list
of features, and not one that is of too much concern to anybody.
Only if people ask, I tell them that GNAT is based on Ada95 and
POSIX.5 with many cool library extensions such as a regular
expression library and more. Nobody gets excited these days
just about an "ISO/IEC 8652 conforming" stamp on some software.
I suggest to ACT to generate loads of press releases when
GNAT 3.11p is available, not a single of which should contain
any reference to Ada. Then see what happens ... ;-)
Markus
--
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-01-25 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 49+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-01-21 0:00 how to make Ada more popular? bill_1
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-22 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-24 0:00 ` bill_1
1999-01-25 0:00 ` Kees Serier
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Fraser Wilson
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Hans N. Beck
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Al Christians
1999-01-21 0:00 ` bill_1
1999-01-21 0:00 ` E. Robert Tisdale
1999-01-21 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu
1999-01-23 0:00 ` micro_ada
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Al Christians
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Steve Doiel
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Lack of Ada Windows books (was: " Larry Kilgallen
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Kees Serier
1999-01-22 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-25 0:00 ` David Botton
1999-01-25 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-01-25 0:00 ` bill_1
1999-01-30 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-01-25 0:00 ` Jerry van Dijk
1999-01-26 0:00 ` Richard D Riehle
1999-01-27 0:00 ` kna
1999-01-27 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen
1999-01-22 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner
1999-01-24 0:00 ` dewar
1999-01-25 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn [this message]
1999-01-24 0:00 ` Al Christians
1999-01-25 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-29 0:00 ` Aidan Skinner
1999-01-23 0:00 ` Bob Munck
1999-01-31 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1999-01-27 0:00 ` Making ADA More Popular Michael Garrett
1999-01-27 0:00 ` Michael Garrett
1999-01-27 0:00 ` joel
1999-01-27 0:00 ` Marin David Condic
1999-01-28 0:00 ` dewar
1999-02-03 0:00 ` how to make Ada more popular? Donald Duck
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1999-02-03 0:00 ` Andrzej Lewandowski
1999-02-03 0:00 ` news.oxy.com
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