Re: The Hobby Lobby was Windows CE?

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

No, it isn't strictly necessary to get it into store shelves, but it sure
helps a lot if you want to sell lots of copies. :-)

The case you cite is a bit different. Fortran, as a language, has an
extremely large number of users in a wide variety of application areas.
These users already know the language and use the language, so you don't
need to sell them on the language itself. Ada - while it has a dedicated and
non-trivial following - does not have such a large base of existing users.
So you first have to sell "The Masses" on the notion of using the language,
then you can sell them on the particular implementation.

I'm sure among the dedicated Ada users already in existence, that most of
them have no real need to go to a store to buy it. They either get it
downloaded from one or more sources off of the net or already have
relationships with vendors or at minimum know who to go to in order to get
something they already wanted. This is analogous to the Visual Fortran 95
users you cite - just not as large a number. But how many sales are there to
people who have no current use of Fortran or no special knowledge of Fortran
or who may not even know what Fortran is?

That particular group of potential customers is what Ada has to reach out
and get to.

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:3BB340C6.DC51CB98@lmtas.lmco.com...
> Hi,
>
> But is it even necessary to get it onto store shelves.  Visual Fortran
> 95 from Compaq/Intel isn't in any stores that I'm aware of and it's
> selling like hot cakes (estimate about 100 copies at my site alone).
>