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: 103376,5f8432149982f35e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ted Dennison Subject: Re: Ada and QNX Date: 2000/10/17 Message-ID: <8shnk8$kov$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 682470230 References: <8r1i82$ri3$1@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl> <8r5pe5$h70$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8FCDFD7EEnopenopena@63.209.170.206> <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com> <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com> <39EB1BA2.B5F2BFDF@acm.org> <39EB283A.9F7B4F76@motorola.com> <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org> <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x69.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 204.48.27.130 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Tue Oct 17 14:27:30 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDtedennison Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; I) Date: 2000-10-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar wrote: > In article <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org>, > Marin David Condic wrote: > > > To use an analogy that's been used before: Which is better? > > > Sony's Beta format or VHS? From most technical standpoints, Beta was > > a better format. Why didn't it catch on? A thousand reasons can be > > given, but few will be based on some sort of > > "Technical Superiority" of VHS. > > Yes, Beta had better picture quality, but that was NOT the > important technical feature, the dominating technical feature > was the maximum recording time, and VHS got ahead there so > significantly that Beta could not catch up. That is indeed a good example of a technical argument for VHS. However, I think a far more convincing argument in VHS's favor was that it was an open format, whereas Beta was closly held by one company. When in direct competition with an open platform, proprietary formats typically don't stand a chance. The field of history is strewn with the rotting corpses of "technically superior" proprietary products that tried to take on open standards. I'm sure everyone here could name a score such examples in the fields of computer hardware (lost out to the open PC standard) and OS (lost out to the relativly open Unix standard) fields alone. One could argue that the only reason the closed Windows OS made it this far is that it piggybacked on the dominant open computer standard (the PC). A particularly bold person could further argue that, given that an reasonably comparable open OS for the PC is now available, Windows is now doomed. That is exactly the argument being made in the essay at http://muq.org/~cynbe/rants/lastdino.htm . > I recently saw someone say in an influential list on Ada that > they thought that the fact that Ada had a better defined > standard was a crucial element to Ada's success. My own feeling > is that even if this were true (it is not!) then it would not > be terribly important, and if we concentrated on that aspect I'd actually say that person was onto something. The Ada standard is one of the few that is freely avaialable on the web for anyone to read. It is also one of the few language standards with any kind of teeth to it. Ada users *expect* to be able to take their code to any other Ada compiler and have it compile and even behave the same way when run. That means an Ada user is not nearly as tied to their compiler vendor after a large amount of code is written. That may prove more important to Ada's success than any of the "if you could only have one feature" thread answers. There's also the issue of protection from OS implementation issues. Most other languages require their users to go to the OS to do anything serious. Ada has things like tasking and intertask communications and synchronization in the language itself. Thus an Ada user is not nearly as tied to their OS as users of most other languages (even Java in some cases). So I can write something as complicated as a real-time scheduler, and move my code to another OS and compiler without changing a single line of code. (This is not hypotheical. We actually did this!) So Ada in many ways is a more "open" language standard than any other. This is the leverage I think it would be wisest to use in proselytizing the language to the world at large. The "technical superiority" arguments should still be thrown in as background info, to give technical folks good fodder for rationalizing their choice. But the emphasis should be on the open-ness of the language. -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.