Re: Java portability

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

Well, for that matter, when you go buy a Freightliner Tractor, you can buy
it without an engine & get one of your own choosing put in there. Or you
could buy an F-15 Eagle and choose to put a GE engine (The Bad Guys) or a
Pratt & Whitney engine (The Good Guys) in it - but they never came "factory
equipped" with one or the other as the default. This is the point where the
analogy breaks down ;-)

The point being that in the days when language vendors are supplying big
class libraries, GUI builders, debuggers, IDEs that do more than edit files,
etc. it is going to be hard for Ada to compete unless the same sort of
things are available. Saying "Well you can download X from
http://whozits.com/ and Y from http://whatchamacallit.org/ and Z from
http://somebodyorother.net/ and go compile it yourself and maybe with a few
thousand lines of glue software and a few hundred hours of tinkering you can
kind of have an 'integrated' environment - and oh, by the way, when you get
done with all that code, please be good enough to put it under the GPL and
send it to us so we can package it with our stuff and go sell it to someone
else..." - its not quite the same thing to the buyer as "Here's your 'B-'
compiler with everything you need or want to build apps on platform
Whatever. Where's my check for $29.95?" For a niche language with a bunch of
enthusiastic hobbyists, hackers & students, maybe the former is "Good
Enough" - but then that's where Ada is going to stay.

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/


"Stefan Skoglund" <stetson@ebox.tninet.se> wrote in message
news:3B61C4AF.5B5F4694@ebox.tninet.se...
> Marin David Condic wrote:
> > along the lines of "luxury" items in a car since Ada provides all the
> > essentials that any programming language needs to provide. (No missing
seats
>
> When Ada is the Rolls-royce company of old.
> You could buy your rolls ready-made from the factory
> or with no carriage/seats but technically complete
> and then commission your local horse-wagoon manufacturer.
>
> It exist a number of rolls here in Sweden with Stockholm-made
> carriage.