Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Richard Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net>]

Ada is not for dummies.   To seduce programmer wannabees into believing
that is might be a disservice to them and to the industry.

There are several excellent books available for free that people can
download
from the Web.   John English's book is a good start.   My book, Ada
Distilled,
has proven to be popular among some interested parties.   The Lovelace
Tutorial continues to attract a following.

The inability of Ada to attract a popular following is not due to the lack
of good
educational tools.   Rather, it is due to misperceptions rooted in some
historical
difficulties associated with the language.

Some computer professionals continue to believe Ada is a language used only
by and for military applications.   Compiler vendors, including Rational,
IBM,
and HP, when they were supporting Ada,  isolated Ada in their Federal
Systems
Sales divisions and rarely, if ever, discussed it with their commercial
customers.
Compiler vendors, with a few exceptions (e.g., Meridian, RR Software) priced
Ada compilers at a price so unattractive for commercial customers that few
commercial developers could even consider Ada as an option.   They realized,
while the "mandate" was in effect that they had the DoD "over a barrel" and
could charge whatever they wanted.   There were no libraries available that
made
Ada easy to use on the new Personal Computers of the 1980's.  Ada compilers
were more difficult to use,  and a BASIC programmer could write powerful
programs for simple business problems more easily than most Ada compiler
users.   Meridian tried to overcome this problem with its DOS libraries, but
there were problems with those libraries that created frustration among even
the advocates of Ada.

Starting with Ada 95, Ada got better.  Its reputation did not get better.
Once
a language, product, or person is saddled with a bad reputation, it is
difficult
to overcome it.   It did not help that the DoD abrogated its support for Ada
in the mid-90's.   This was seen, by the software community at large as not
only
the abandonment of Ada for all DoD projects, but the death knell for the
language itself.   Companies solely dedicated to Ada suddenly found
themselves
with a diminishing customer base.   The resulting reduction in the sale of
Ada
compilers and tools led to layoffs,  corporate restructuring,  mergers in
which
Ada products virtually vanished, and smaller number of universities choosing
Ada as part of their curriculum.

Ada continues to be one of the best options for developing robust software.
Even
if it were the best option, that would not be enough.  We need to somehow
get
the message to the larger software community that Ada is a good alternative
to the languages already popular.  For several years, during the 1990's, I,
along
with others, had the opportunity to get the message out through writing
articles
about Ada's success.   I know of several organizations that were attracted
to
Ada through some of those articles.

One company's engineering manager called me and asked for a presentation
on Ada for his engineers.   After the presentation they were enthusiastic
about using it for their commercial real-time applications.  Then they
encountered
a compiler vendor, one of the most prominent of the compiler vendors of the
1990's.   The Ada representatives of the compiler vendor did not understand
commercial applications or commercial needs. They approached the entire
problem as they would a "funded" military project.   Their prices were too
high.
Their service too military-oriented.  Their attitude was interpreted by the
prospect
as, "We don't really know how to serve you and we already have plenty of
military customers who are a lot less trouble than you."    Whether this was
their
intent, this is how the prospect percieved them.  We lost that large
multinational
company to C++, not because C++ was better, but because of the attitudes
of the compiler vendor.

This story is not unique.  As long as Ada was considered, even by its
advocates,
a primarily a "government" language, it had no chance to survive in
commercial
industry.  Now, Ada is not directly tied to the military.  In fact, most
military
contractors have rejected it in favor of C++ or Java.  I see that directly
because
so many of my military contractor clients have all but abandoned Ada.  One
excuse for doing so is the lame, "We can't find experience Ada programmers."

If we want to revitalize interest in Ada, we must do so by creating good
systems
in Ada.   I mean by this, good commercial software products.  As we do so,
we
can make it known that the quality of these products is, in part, because we
used
Ada.   At present, with the exception of ACT and RR Software, even the Ada
compiler vendors use other languages for their own internal software
projects.

Ada can be popular.  It is all uphill from here.   Ada programmers of the
world
unite.  You have nothing to lose but your C++.

Richard Riehle



"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org> wrote in message
news:87zn9sygtj.fsf@insalien.org...
> I would add that, I think the best way to promote Ada is to write "Ada
> for Dummies" books and litter bookstores with them.  This, of course,
> requires millions of bucks in marketing.  At the same time, there
> should be a press campaign in "Joe User's Home PC Magazine" saying
> that "Ada in the Entreprise" is the next big thing.  Pointy-haired
> managers and apprentice programmers alike read this kind of magazine
> religiously.
>
> Combined, these two actions would create the illusion that "everyone
> uses Ada".  As Sun and Java, and C++, have demonstrated, this illusion
> becomes reality when sufficiently many people believe it.
>
> -- 
> Ludovic Brenta.