Re: ACT ANNOUNCES: GNAT 3.11p now available!

["news.oxy.com" <Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com>]

Tom Moran wrote in message <36af7017.3577788@news.pacbell.net>...
>>I have a dream that ...
>There's a thread talking about "Ada programming mind-set" vs C.
>Sounds to me like we have here another difference in "mind-set".

Yes, it is definitely another difference in "mind-set".
"Mind-set" of a customer/user in Windows NT world that get used to the
practice when software companies are trying to do all their best to better
serve the needs of the customers and make their life easier. That companies
do not tell "end-users" of their products: "why don't you put aside your
current work in your company and dedicate you time helping us to promote our
products or make installation packages for them".
Their mentality is: "How can we do your life easier and what else can we do
for you".

To see an example of such approach just look at the Inprise home page
 www.inprise.com ) and their products. Their goals, targets and approaches
are "end-user" oriented. Look at their Delphi page (www.inprise.com/delphi )
. I think everything is clear from that.
Borland was not very big company at all when it started on the market. Now
it is one of the leading companies selling tools and solutions for the
enterprise market. Moreover there were times when it had serious financial
problems. They stopped for a while, revised their businesses and goals, took
some hard decisions and now they are again one of the leading companies.

I should say that ACT is doing great job promoting Ada with their free GNAT
product and I highly appreciate it.

But good language itself is only  platform for further movement ahead.

Now when we have several very good Ada 95 compilers it is time for creating
applications building blocks within RAD systems that use all the power of
Ada. May be "(free compiler) - (commercial compiler/development support) -
(commercial RAD tools based on free compiler) -(support of free compiler
from RAD tools companies)" could be a good approach to promote Ada on
enterprise market?
Anyway there exist bright financial analysts/managers and marketers that can
invent appropriate scheme to make money using Ada power. Each professional
should be on his/her best place.

For a long time many Ada software companies was sponsored by US DoD and this
formed some sort of mentality that does not help now to promote Ada. I know
this kind of mentality very well because for a long time I was working in
the similar system.
Also I have a feeling that some people are so self-proud that they are
producing compiler systems for the best programming language (and Ada is
really the best) that they think that it is enough to be the best
programming language to push away other poor programming languages from
their niches. Sometimes it reminds me situation when you tell some parent,
which is proud of his child, that his/her child lacks something or needs
something more and you can have all kinds of reaction in response to your
words (familiar situation, is not it?).
I would like to mention that your company (RR Software - I saw your name
there) approach with CLAW product is one of the best examples of the
"end-user" oriented mentality. This is right step in right direction. Of
course it is not a Delphi in functionality yet (now it mostly concentrates
around GUI and high level OOP GUI libraries) but it is already solid
platform for such solution in Ada for Windows NT world. Availability of high
OOP reusable tasking-safe building blocks that use all Ada strength and wrap
and hide hundreds of calls to the low level Win32 APIs is a great help to
all kinds of programmers (both full time professional as well as
occasional). Such building blocks accumulate experiences and knowledge of
many highly professional programmers and make that accamulated experience
available to other professionals and occasional programmers.
The complexity of the modern operating systems requires a lot of time to be
spend studying thousands of API calls and a lot of low level programming to
make safe, robust, efficient and professional software components. When that
is done by professionals and then it is available to all others it
accelerates the progress as a whole. The less time we spend to reinvent the
wheel the more we can do to make life better.
As a matter of fact when I encountered CLAW my first thought was - this is
what we need. So when new CLAW release became available I ordered it without
any hesitations and soon I will be one of the happy users of CLAW and
recommend to others to have a look at it
(http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/claw/claw.htm).  And thanks to RR
Software for CLAW .


Regards,

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