Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

You don't need to extend Ada to get at the Win32api. You can get there
through a set of packages distributed with a number of Ada compilers called
Win32Ada....

I think Ted's comments had more to do with the notion that because Ada is
rather stringently controlled in terms of a standard, etc. that "certain
powers that be" would be unable to glom onto it, add their own extensions,
through sheer size get thousands of users hooked on their "embraced and
extended" "standard" and then totally control the market - thus bringing the
Justice Department down on their head with anti-trust suits.

Of course there is nothing stopping someone from using Ada syntax & adding
things to it. Any Ada compiler can do that - and even still be validated,
provided there is some mode in which it will interpret "standard" Ada95.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Gary Scott" <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> wrote in message
news:3B1EAAB4.5C86F53D@lmtas.lmco.com...
> Obviously.  What we're talking about is expanding Ada's market.  I too
> would prefer that extensions be kept to a minimum.  I'm not familiar
> enough with Ada to know that extensions would be required simply to
> access the Win32 C-based API (I hadn't thought so).  Those are the only
> extensions that I'm aware of that MIGHT be required for some other
> languages (at least until the next standard revision).
>
> If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
> easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
> set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).
>
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> >
> > In article <3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
> > >So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
> > >with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...
> >
> > Perhaps because the Ada market's insistance on standard conformance
prevents
> > "someone" from embracing-and-extending the language to trap their users.
> >
> > ---
> > T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
> >           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com