Re: Proving Correctness (was Java Portability)

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Marin David Condic <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote:

: So, IMHO, Ada needs to be more "Customer Centered" and offer the users &
: potential users the kinds of things they are currently buying. 

Or, only as an alternative, something completely different.
That variant is quite a market success in times.
E.g., I wasn't tooooo impressed when I tried ISE Eiffel (only the
text editing facilities), but it does really have more power than vi
and adamode is heading towards it.  They now have completed
Visual Studio integration, but I doubt they have given up all
the nifty browsing features, which afaik couldn't be bought for
C++, say. Let's see how Eiffel# will raise the number
of Eiffel installations.


As to programmer capabilities, aka human resources(?), and given
the number of circulating Visual C++ copies, I realize there is
a market for Visual Ada, but <Conjecture>there is also quite a
number of programmers who have learned to use a "Language/Emacs"
combination, or better, or worse</>, but different enough to
make the effort to learn to use Visual Ada less cost effective
than assembling the components in the manner they are somewhat
used to.

:  I've got it all in one box and there's a good collection
: of documents that work your people through how to use it and you're up and
: running right away."

Does this product exist? :-) We've not been _that_ successful with
the alledgedly multipotent Java libraries, in that a few tedious
work arounds were necessary.

: Or we can say "What you want doesn't make sense and when you smarten up,
: you'll choose Ada" - but that hasn't worked well so far in terms of
: capturing a large market.

Agreed, yes, the masses are best captured by positive mass psychological
means, which sometimes involves being silent about bitter truths. :-) :-)

 But have you considered what mass market Ada programs will look
like? :-) :-) :-)