Re: Need the Same Promotion for Ada

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

I have said here before that the best way to get Ada out of the "niche
market" and into the "mass market" would be to get a really nice, integrated
development kit into a shrink-wrap box with a book and get this in a corner
gondola display at CompUSA, et alia. Thousands of programmers are totally
unaware of the existence of Ada and they don't stand much of a chance of
becoming aware of it when the number of books about Ada on the shelves at
Barnes & Noble, Fryes, etc. is at or near zero and their exposure to Ada
products on the shelves at Best Buy or CompUSA is at a similar level.

Its good that Ada gets taught in some schools. However, a *lot* of
programming is done by high-school geek hobbyists or non-computer
professionals, etc. who tend to pick things up based on what they see in
trade rags and store shelves. A nice, inexpensive, shrink-wrap Ada kit with
textbook and a "Why Ada" introduction at a relatively simple level would
help expose them to it. They might get excited about learning some new
things and start generating that "critical mass" that would make Ada a
market dominator.

Of course, all that takes promotional $$$ and Ada lacks a big institutional
investor. I don't know how to get out of that except to possibly look at
some of the big computer companies and see if one of them could get sold on
the idea of hawking Ada as their own kind of product distinction. Maybe we
need to hire the guy who invented the "Pet Rock" and see if he has any ideas
about promoting Ada. (I always thought the DoD did an absolutely horrible
job of promoting Ada once they invented it. Had they hired a Madison Avenue
firm & paid for an advertising campaign, Ada would not be suffering from the
situation it is in now.)

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" <scottg@flash.net> wrote in message
news:3B2B73D0.F5E67C01@flash.net...
> Hi,
>
> It seems to me that in today's market, for a language to survive and be
> used in anything but a niche manner, requires making the masses aware.
> The very small numbers of people using news groups may be highly aware
> of what's available (and possibly what's superior), but less than 2
> percent of the 2000 or so programmers at my company are aware that Ada
> is even an option for students and would never consider using it for
> their personal projects, even though a significant portion of them are
> required to use it at work.  They have no idea about GNAT or ADAPOWER.
> All they know is M$oft promotes the heck out of C++ and it's available
> at Best Buy, CompUSA, and Fry's, and "management is forcing me to use a
> dead language".  Ada is not my favorite language...but it's my second
> favorite language and I could live comfortably in an Ada-dominant
> world.  Ada SHOULD have a better chance of putting a dent in C++ usage
> than my favorite (dead) language, but doesn't seem to be doing as well,
> at least in the last 3-5 years.  I wish my favorite language well, it is
> evolving well (generally well designed) considering the baggage it must
> carry (albeit very very (very) slowly).  But unless something
> significant changes in the way standards are developed (meaning rate of
> progress), it will be perpetually 5-10 years behind where it should be.
> Ada is already "state of the art" (I obviously don't like some aspects
> of it's definition of "state of the art").  I expect more marketing
> (darnit)!
>