From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_20,TO_NO_BRKTS_PCNT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 31 Aug 93 16:58:48 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die Message-ID: List-Id: A recent article on object oriented technology illustrates why the Ada community only has a short amount of time to achieve Ada acceptance, or seeing the language relegated to a niche role like Forth and Lisp. The article is titled "Users making plans for object technology applications" and is in the August 30 issue of Network World, page 45. In the article, there is a table on percentage of users planning to adopt object oriented technology, based on a survey of 186 managers at some of the largest 1000 companies. The Table is as follows: PRECENTAGE OF USERS ADOPTING OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY 1994 2% 1995 11% 1996 34% 1997 53% 1998 71% 1999 80% 2000 88% Assuming that this survey reflects general industry future plans (and no one in the Mandated world has any equivalent data), and given that 88% pretty much closes up a market, it would appear that the Ada community has seven years to achieve significant market share before it is impossible for Ada to play any significant role in the software engineering and MIS worlds, and therefore to be able to help the DoD meet its software requirements. If by 2000 Ada is still at its present level of about 1% market share outside the Mandated World, then the Ada community will have failed. Such a market share level will not attract many programmers, many companies to develop tools, and many third party types to provide products and services that drive other languages like C++ and Smalltalk. Unfortunately, in my humble :-) opinion, I do not think Ada will be able to have significant market share won for it for two reasons. 1) Current Ada tools are two to three years behind those for other languages. Other than the great Rational tools, most of the Ada compiler environments and libraries are two to three years behind stuff I see for C/C++ and Smalltalk, and even Cobol. Ada research tools, such as most of the STARS stuff, is as far behind, if not farther. In the software world, a two to three year lead is very difficult to overcome, especially given the cutthroat competition now going on in the C/C++ world, and the total inexperience of Ada compilers of competing where people are free to choose. 2) Ada83 is a great language. It failed to get much acceptance not because of any deficiencies maybe corrected in Ada9X, but because the Mandated world either didn't care to promote the language outside the Mandated world or didn't know how. Ada9X is a false promise, because the people who botched the job of handling Ada83 (whoever they are since no one wants to accept responsibilty) - those who didn't - still don't and still won't. So for those of you with overhead to goto Tri-Ada, keep in mind that Ada has a window time shorter than the age of Ada to achieve significant market share, or be dismissed. And think to yourself, is a community that displays over 40 booths at its own internal trade shows, while only one or two booths at public trade shows, is this a community that has any chance of actually having to compete where people are free to choose? -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian srctran@world.std.com Source Translation & Optimization 617-489-3727 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178