Re: Do we need "Mission-Critical" software? Was: What to Do?

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <93c0e9$4u6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  n_brunot@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <937kc7$ssq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > Through the history of Ada we have had people saying
> > "If only we did X, then Ada would be more widely used"
> >
> > But most of these claims have proved experimentally false,
and
> > I think this is another such case. If someone produced a
> > much improved c2ada, I doubt this would suddenly make Ada
> > popular.
>
> I agree.
> Experimentally, one must aknowledge that today Ada is far
> less popular
> than other languages, even than much younger ones.

No, that's an absurd statement unless you insert "some" before
the word other in the above statement. Yes, there are languages
that are more popular. I would suspect that COBOL still heads
the list, with Visual Basic a runner up, followed by C, C++,
Java etc.

But there are many languages around, hundreds of them, and
Ada is far MORE popular than many of them (what's the last
time you saw a new project started in Jovial).

> This will not suddenly and magically change without real
> questions and answers about that.

It wil not suddently and magically change period. I think it
quite unlikely that Ada will become super popular in the
future. Anyone who counts on that is deluding themselves.

> Most explanations we read can unfortunately be summarized by
> "Ada is the best, the rest of the world should start to
> understand it" followed by a bunch of technical
> justifications
>
> This is the main thing that really experimentally proved to
> be totally counterproductive, even if this is often true.

Counterproductive -- I don't think so, most Ada users starting
new Ada projects today do so *precisely* because they think
that Ada is technically superior for the task at hand.

> Only Ada users really care about those explanations.
> So the result is that Ada users keep convincing one another
> that they made the best choice.

> This is totally useless since they are already convinced.

Useless to whom?

> The only consequence is that this keep us blind at the fact
> that we haven't the slightest chance to promote Ada with this
> attitude.

Unconvincing. Particularly since you don't provide any credible
alternative suggestions. At this stage there is no magic to
promote Ada I suspect, but so what?

> Anybody who talked about Ada to software people not using Ada
> (which are unfortunately everything but a minority) knows
> that the usual answer is: "Ada ? this still exists ???"

I would guess most people would say that about PL/1 also, but
so what? PL/1 is used in many projects today, and work on PL/1
compilers etc continues. There are even people (I believe we
saw one on CLA recently) who think that COBOL does not exist
any more.

> Not exactly. This is quite restrictive. Most components we
> use are available for Win32 and Unix.

OK, well that puts you in a minority position I think (unless
you are under the illusion that Unix is as widely used as
Win32).

> Especially because of linux, a very great number of available
> libraries are now ported for non Win32 platform.

Indeed, but a large number are not. I have not seen a
convincing port of Win32 to Unix yet (yes, I know people are
working on this, but it is far from being a reliable product).

There are many technologies that people assume have disappeared
because they are not dominant, but that's not the way the world
works. Just because more Toyota's are sold than BMW's does
not mean that BMW is out of business.

Volume is not everything :-)

Don't get me wrong, I would certainly be happy to see Ada more
widely used, and I would be delighted to see it really widely
used. That's one of the main reasons I promoted the GNAT
project in the first place.

But despite hints to the contrary in N. Brunot's message, I
don't think there is any magic method of making Ada successful.

Instead you look for little opportunities and take them one at
a time. I think the fact that GNOME may be distributed with
GvdAda is a very positive opportunity as an example. This will
probably be the most widely distributed Ada program, and what
is more encouraging is that the GNOME folks are very
encouraging and quite happy to see Ada components in the
system.

Another positive sign is that people are definitely
enthusiastic about seeing Ada become part of the mainstream
GCC system. Right now, the plan is to complete the GCC 3.0
distribution, and then follow up very shortly with a GCC 3.1
which will include many important improvements, including
Ultraspark support, and Ada. And what is particularly nice is
that it is someone NOT particularly associated with Ada who
expressed enthusiasm about this prospect on the gcc mailing
list today.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies




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