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=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,45c64a512ac9247a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union. Date: 1999/12/01 Message-ID: <821sui$cnt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 554999404 References: X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x29.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Dec 01 01:17:09 1999 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-12-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote: > From: Bob Leif > To: Robert Dewar et al. > > Robert Dewar wrote, "we are certainly not in the mode of > asking the community for neat ideas!' > > This process is called being market driven. You have just provided a very > good explanation for a significant part of Ada's lack of commercial success. > Most successful companies know the value of consumer input. Absolutely, we definitely know the value of consumer input, it is just that we do not regard miscellenous suggestions on CLA as consumer input. For us consumer input is carefully thought out suggestions from consumers in our target market. Read my previous post in another thread about how everyone is sure that XXX is the key to Ada success. XXX is different for many contributors to CLA, but generally we simply don't find these suggestions to be very valuable as consumer input. Oh yes, and it is typically the case that the people who are sure that XXX is the key, are also sure that failure to implement XXX is what contributes to Ada's commercial success. Well so far, Ada Core Technologies is being quite successful commercially and otherwise. We have made some missteps, which interestingly are cases where there was a loud constituency for a particular port, notable cases are the Mac, which many people were sure had a large crowd of people just itching to get their hands on a Mac Ada 95 compiler [actual experience, we had one customer who tried to get MachTen to work, but had insuperable difficulties using it in a production environment], and another notable case was the DOS port, for which there was never even one customer (so yes, Vladimir, we do have some cases where we invest our own resources in failures :-) Setting priorities and figuring out where to put resources and what new features are needed and valuable, is not at all an easy process to be sure. Part of the trouble is that many people making suggestions do not have a good overview of the Ada market, but rather tend to see just one little part of the market, or concentrate on one possible extension of this market. We are certainly working on new features for GNAT all the time. If we are not working on your pet feature, it means that either we don't deem it valuable, or we see other things as more important given our estimation of consumer input, and incidentally not just consumer input, but consumer needs. The static elaboration is a good example. Lots of Ada users have a lot of trouble with elaboration, but I would not expect consumer input to say "hey, how about implementing a static mechanism for elaboration which bla bla bla....". Instead this is a case where we perceived a need, invested considerable resources in providing it, and sure enough it has proved invaluable to many users (some know it, others don't even know it, they just don't run into troubles which they otherwise might have :-) Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.