Re: Is Ada the Future?

[stt@dsd.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)]

In article <INFO-ADA%94100122101508@vm1.nodak.edu>,
Simtel20 Transfer  <HARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU> wrote:
> ...
>Ok, I'll speculate that Ada 9X needs about $750M
>invested over the next several years to make it
>a commercial success.
>Agree?  Disagree?

Disagree.  The key to the success of Ada 9X, IMHO, is
to leverage the work being done in other languages, and not
try to reinvent the wheel completely.  There are many
vendors pouring money into various kinds of multilingual
integrated development environments.  Much of that investment
can be generalized to include Ada 9X, if there are the
Ada-specific components (aka "personality modules") available.

One of the biggest problems "last time" with Ada was that
most vendors took the route of making Ada an empire (duchy? ;-)
unto itself, rather than integrating with the multilingual
tools already on the platform.  This emphasized the impression
that Ada talked only to itself, and that you had to go all Ada
and only Ada to get advantages out of Ada.

"This time," I hope that with efforts like GNAT and others,
we will be able to integrate Ada seemlessly with the multilingual
tools, and allow incremental adoption and use of Ada in conjunction
with other languages.  Clearly one of the advantages of C++
is that it can be adopted incrementally.  Ada can and should
be the same way.  Although the Ada "purists" had an understandable
point of view, I believe it almost killed the language.  Ada is
a tool, and a very effective one, but if the entry barrier is
too high, you can never get started and familiar enough with it to make
a big commitment to it.

What this means is that huge investments are not what is required.
Rather what is required is careful and seemless integration with
existing tool suites.

The Windows NT do-it-all-from-scratch-but-maintain-compatibility-with-
a-groddy-and-crufty-wart-on-a-kludge mentality is not what is needed.
The right mentality is focusing on adding incremental value to existing
tool suites, luring people to try Ada in an environment where the
entry barrier is low, all other things are equal, and the inherent
reliability, safety, flexibility, and readability of the language can
be appreciated, without the unnecessary burdens of quirky, idiosynchratic,
slow, expensive, and incompatible Ada-specific tool sets.

You asked ;-)
	
>sam harbaugh HARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU
>p.s. just the team Ada uniforms will cost
>a considerable amount of money  :-)

Now that's a good point!

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