Re: Re-Marketing Ada (was "With and use")

["Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net>]

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"Marin David Condic" <nobody@noplace.com> wrote in message
news:3FBB6527.4040702@noplace.com...
> They have a tool for that. Its called a "Programmer". ;-)
>
> Being able to bind to C/C++ libraries is nice and Ada can do that.
> Getting an automated tool isn't a bad thing, but I don't think that
> really makes Ada significantly more attractive. Ultimately, the user is
> still looking at the situation and asking why he has to use *two*
> languages instead of just one. You *never* get out of "catch up" mode
> and you're *never* offering something "unique" and "innovative" - just
> copying what someone else has done.
>
Well yes because it can translate header files and such, AdaCREATE would be
able to do bindings, but it wouldn't be limited to that however.  like you
said, (later in this message) it would have been an atempt at also
tranlsation libraries, not binding to them, which would be why some sort of
reverse engineering would be involved in the process :-).  But you're right
about innovating, if it's the same, they would probably stick with what's
already there. haven't thought of that.

> Ultimately, what Ada needs is to have the same sort of libraries that
> C/C++ does but written directly in Ada and in Ada style. Don't duplicate
> - innovate. Ada doesn't have to have a parallel for *every* C/C++
> library. It just needs to have parallels for the things that are most
> common in software development: Containers, GUI, Database... The fact
> that it doesn't have some Computational Fluid Dynamics package and C++
> does is only going to piss off a really small number of programmers. Get
> the *critical* capabilities available in a standard way and offer some
> *innovation* there to make it attractive for new program development.
>
Wish more vendors would read (and understand clearly) this last paragraph of
yours.  ISO does nothing as far as libraries go.  If we were to do a library
and submit it to the ISO for inclusion, not sure what would happen then
since they don't deal with libraries in the first place.  They would
prpbably have to create something, a sub group or an annotation to the
standard for libraries or something to do anything about including a
library. and I'm not sure if they would.

This is like 3rd party vendors for other languages.  they're there, but the
commercial compilers don't include them per se in their distributions.
Somebody else manages and sells it.  Not the language makers.  (unless it
becomes so popular and useful) and this last parenthesis might be what we
need to aim for.


> MDC
>
>

-- 
St�phane Richard
"Ada World" Webmaster
http://www.adaworld.com