Re: Gauntlet gathering rust and dust

[noc.near.net!inmet!spock!stt@uunet.uu.net (Tucker Taft)]

In article <1993Jul23.011508.9410@iplmail.orl.mmc.com> jcrigler@theopolis.orl.m
mc.com (Jim Crigler) writes:

>Well, the dust is gathering and the rust is forming on my original
>challenge (over 3 weeks old!) to Ada vendors to tell whether they
>intend to exhibit at OOPSLA.  I've seen one reply from one vendor
>(primarily a _system_ vendor at that) and have seen mention (by Dave?)
>of a handful of others.  

It is generally a mistake to use responses in a network bulletin board
as any statistical indication of anything.  There are many people who
simply don't read comp.lang.<relevant-language>.  There are still more
people who find comp.lang.ada in particular a frustrating bulletin
board given its signal-to-noise ratio.  Finally, there are those who
choose to use other forums to announce their intentions.

Now of course us regular readers/contributors to comp.lang.ada presume
that anyone who doesn't read and participate regularly is somewhat out
to lunch, but I think we should be very careful not to thrust our
personal view on the market as a whole.  It would be interesting to
correlate dollars-and-cents success in the marketplace with participation
in comp.lang.ada.  I suspect there is not much of a correlation.

In any case, to answer part of your question, there will be an Ada 9X
booth at OOPSLA '93, and a couple of tutorials.  Frankly, Ada 9X compilers 
are not ready for prime time yet.  Only RR has released a beta version
of a compiler that does any significant semantic processing of Ada 9X features.
GNAT has full Ada 9X parsing, but little or no Ada 9X semantics yet.
That may change by September, but we are still probably six months away
from having something someone could reasonably call an Ada 9X compiler.
Given a limited budget, one has to weigh spending time and energy on
this year's OOPSLA, versus making a bigger splash next year.  Particularly
at conferences, vaporware is frowned on.  People like to see running
demos, and be able to sign up for immediate delivery (or even better,
get a demo disk to take home).  We just aren't there yet with Ada 9X compilers.

You are right that much of the work on Object-Oriented Design began
with Ada 83, but these days, it is clear that the people going to
OOPSLA are interested in object-oriented *programming*, not just
object-oriented design.  Although I agree that Ada vendors in general
tend to limit themselves too much to the captive Ada market, I would
not see OOPSLA as the best investment for their money this year.

It is not even clear that conferences at all are a good investment
for compiler vendors.  Compilers are fundamentally boring things to look at;
and exhibition booths and space are expensive.  One should not
evaluate companies on whether or not they attend certain conferences
or advertise in certain magazines.  The question is how much product
they ship, of what quality, and with what profit margins.  
Marketing is far from being a science, and just because a company 
doesn't advertise in a channel that is important to a reader 
of comp.lang.ada, doesn't necessarily determine whether they are 
reaching the relevant potential customers.  

>Jim Crigler

S. Tucker Taft    stt@inmet.com
Intermetrics, Inc.
Cambridge, MA  02138