Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> But who should pick the "Winning Design"? I'd think that ought to be the 
> vendors. Hence, I'd imagine them running the show and agreeing to 
> deliver the end result. Otherwise, you're free to submit a design to me 
> and I'll pronounce it "The Winner" and declare it to be "The Official 
> Conventional Ada Library. What does that accomplish?

You are of course, entitled to that opinion. However, I would suggest
that it not _necessarily_ be run that way. The vendor still will need
to know what the users prefer. It seems to me that the users of the
winning design should be involved in picking the winning design. A
vendor is might just pick the path of least resistance, or lowest
support cost design, while the user may be interested in a higher
functionality profile etc.

In the end the users must be satisfied, because they will not just
swallow and use anything the vendors happen to provide.

> Get something going with the vendors and I think you'll see a library 
> result that starts to get shipped with compilers 

Perhaps this much..

> and used as "The 
> General Answer" by most developers. 

I don't agree that this necessarily follows, except perhaps out
of a developer path of least resistance.

> I don't think it matters if the 
> vendors form up a R&D group and fund it to do the job or get a SIGAda 
> committee going and donate some of their staff to it or contract the job 
> out or pick some volunteer effort as "The Winner" and start building on 
> it. Long term, I think they're going to have to spend a few bucks to 
> keep it going, but they're doing that already in most respects via the 
> ARM and their own libraries. I see them as the key to picking a 
> direction and adopting something to go there and making it be "The 
> Standard Thing". Without their involvement, we'll just see more of the 
> same.
> 
> MDC

The only thing I see as being critical to the winning design, is a
reference implementation. After all, any grandiose design can have
the trappings of being the best on paper, but be a dog in binary
form.

Given an effective reference implementation, it is mostly
up to the users what they really want. If the users tell the vendors
they want X, then the vendors won't have any trouble with X if it
is indeed practical to provide and support. It obviously helps if
the vendords love it, but I hardly think this is a requirement.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg