From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,470860aa3e635a7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT for MS Visual Studio References: <13duou81kg3sd1c@corp.supernews.com> <13f3e0vbb05s47c@corp.supernews.com> <13f6eg0te46m2a3@corp.supernews.com> <6Y6dnRPSgqC592HbnZ2dnUVZ_oqhnZ2d@comcast.com> From: Markus E L Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:36:36 +0200 Message-ID: <9xodfnw2qj.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de> User-Agent: Some cool user agent (SCUG) Cancel-Lock: sha1:ONeOCNb36g/VLYHaQ3qhrBDzRTI= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.72.204.37 X-Trace: news.arcor-ip.de 1190971884 88.72.204.37 (28 Sep 2007 11:31:24 +0200) X-Complaints-To: abuse@arcor-ip.de Path: g2news2.google.com!news2.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.motzarella.org!motzarella.org!newsfeeder.dynfx.net!news.unit0.net!newsfeed.arcor-ip.de!news.arcor-ip.de!not-for-mail Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:2213 Date: 2007-09-28T11:36:36+02:00 List-Id: "Steve" wrote: > "Markus E L" > wrote in message news:u1wsudty5c.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de... >> >> "Steve" wrote: > [snip] >>> What I was trying to point out (if anyone was listening) is that there >>> are >>> tools available (for tool builders, which I'm not... its just not my >>> forte') >>> that should make it relatively easy for tool builders to include support >>> for >>> interactively building .NET forms in the Visual Studio 2005 development >>> environment. >> >> Obviously not easy enough to make building those tools into a viable >> market. That might be due to the size of the market or the difficulty >> / ineconomy of maintaining such support over the years. >> > That is the point that I question. And that is the point where I question your wisdom regarding business viability of products. Randy (who has much better insight and much more experience than I do) already said practically everything that could have been said. > Prior to Microsoft opening up the VS for adding tools I am certain > that that was true. I'm not talking about closed or open interfaces. I'm talking about _mutation_. About the fact that I would -- within a ten year product cycle -- have to fiddle with my product all the time to adapt it to ne strategies, extended APIs (so that it interacts with the rest of VS) and so on. > But who knows. It might turn out that the amount of work required > to able to build forms interactively is minimial. So perhaps _you_ can make a flourishing business from that? If not, you perhaps have to believe others (Randy) that they decided against for very good reasons. As with the pudding: The proof is in the eating -- I'll believe you're right, if I see someone doing the VS integration you're demanding and succeeding. After his/her product is on the market for some years I might even buy it enad perhaps use it. Until then, and that is the important point, I won't trust most of my code to some GUI builder, because I know that Make and Emacs will be there in 10 years, but the GUI builder might not. And I hate what happens to my application when tool vendors go out of the market. > That functionality already exists for multiple languages. > Perhaps there are nice classes that just need to have the details of the > language defined. That sort of thing certainly didn't exist in the past, > certainly not from Microsoft, but you never used to be able do download a > compiler for free from Microsoft either. >> Still my point applies: You cannot imagin building GUIs w/o >> "interactively building" etc. My suspicion why there is no market for >> GUI builders is: >> > Actually, on the contrary I think this is one of the reason there is > (almost) no market for Ada in the general computing community. Actually this is one of the generic usenet arguments: "I have pet peeve X. I think this is the reason why your interest Y has no market". Give me some corroboration. > I went through the process of justifying the choice of language for a system > several years ago. At the time I was able to move things toward Ada. Since > then matters beyond my control have moved things toward C++ and C#. > > In my experience, when the choice of a programming language has to be > justified, any capability that choice A has over choice B is part of the > consideration. Sometimes the reasons are real, sometimes they are not. > That's just the way things work. Unfortunately with Ada the GUI generally > goes in the disadvantage category. Actually I don't think so. At least for Gnat there is binding to a portable tool kit. This is an advantage, not a disadvantage (at least in some quarters). Regards -- Markus