* Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union.
@ 1999-11-27 0:00 Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.
1999-12-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. @ 1999-11-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: comp.lang.ada
From: Bob Leif
To: Robert Dewar et al.
Robert Dewar wrote, "we are certainly not in the mode of asking the
community for neat ideas!'
This process is called being market driven. You have just provided a very
good explanation for a significant part of Ada's lack of commercial success.
Most successful companies know the value of consumer input. A good sales and
marketing organization reports back on what the customers are doing. It is
quite possible, especially in software, to have your customers start the
development of a product.
Fortunately, ACT has interacted with its customers.
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Dewar [mailto:robert_dewar@my-deja.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 1999 4:58 PM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: RE: Binding a type to a union.
In article <NBBBJNOMKDIAJALCEFIJEEMEDFAA.rleif@rleif.com>,
comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:
> 3) An
> informal process, at least initially, be set up where we the
> users can make
> suggestions for these "semi-standard extensions."
The informal process is to convince at least one vendor to
pursue your idea, at the moment the extensions are being
driven primarily by customer input to vendors, we are certainly
not in the mode of asking the community for neat ideas!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union. 1999-11-27 0:00 Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. @ 1999-12-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-12-04 0:00 ` GNAT port for DOS (Was:Re: Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union.) Vladimir Olensky 0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1999-12-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <NBBBJNOMKDIAJALCEFIJMEMODFAA.rleif@rleif.com>, comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote: > From: Bob Leif > To: Robert Dewar et al. > > Robert Dewar wrote, "we are certainly not in the mode of > asking the community for neat ideas!' > > This process is called being market driven. You have just provided a very > good explanation for a significant part of Ada's lack of commercial success. > Most successful companies know the value of consumer input. Absolutely, we definitely know the value of consumer input, it is just that we do not regard miscellenous suggestions on CLA as consumer input. For us consumer input is carefully thought out suggestions from consumers in our target market. Read my previous post in another thread about how everyone is sure that XXX is the key to Ada success. XXX is different for many contributors to CLA, but generally we simply don't find these suggestions to be very valuable as consumer input. Oh yes, and it is typically the case that the people who are sure that XXX is the key, are also sure that failure to implement XXX is what contributes to Ada's commercial success. Well so far, Ada Core Technologies is being quite successful commercially and otherwise. We have made some missteps, which interestingly are cases where there was a loud constituency for a particular port, notable cases are the Mac, which many people were sure had a large crowd of people just itching to get their hands on a Mac Ada 95 compiler [actual experience, we had one customer who tried to get MachTen to work, but had insuperable difficulties using it in a production environment], and another notable case was the DOS port, for which there was never even one customer (so yes, Vladimir, we do have some cases where we invest our own resources in failures :-) Setting priorities and figuring out where to put resources and what new features are needed and valuable, is not at all an easy process to be sure. Part of the trouble is that many people making suggestions do not have a good overview of the Ada market, but rather tend to see just one little part of the market, or concentrate on one possible extension of this market. We are certainly working on new features for GNAT all the time. If we are not working on your pet feature, it means that either we don't deem it valuable, or we see other things as more important given our estimation of consumer input, and incidentally not just consumer input, but consumer needs. The static elaboration is a good example. Lots of Ada users have a lot of trouble with elaboration, but I would not expect consumer input to say "hey, how about implementing a static mechanism for elaboration which bla bla bla....". Instead this is a case where we perceived a need, invested considerable resources in providing it, and sure enough it has proved invaluable to many users (some know it, others don't even know it, they just don't run into troubles which they otherwise might have :-) Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* GNAT port for DOS (Was:Re: Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union.) 1999-12-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1999-12-04 0:00 ` Vladimir Olensky 0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread From: Vladimir Olensky @ 1999-12-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote in message <821sui$cnt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>... >In article <NBBBJNOMKDIAJALCEFIJMEMODFAA.rleif@rleif.com>, > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote: >> From: Bob Leif >> To: Robert Dewar et al. >> >> Robert Dewar wrote, "we are certainly not in the mode of >> asking the community for neat ideas!' >> >> This process is called being market driven. You have just >provided a very >> good explanation for a significant part of Ada's lack of >commercial success. >> Most successful companies know the value of consumer input. > >Well so far, Ada Core Technologies is being quite successful >commercially and otherwise. We have made some missteps, which >interestingly are cases where there was a loud constituency for >a particular port, notable cases are the Mac, which many people >were sure had a large crowd of people just itching to get their >hands on a Mac Ada 95 compiler [actual experience, we had one >customer who tried to get MachTen to work, but had insuperable >difficulties using it in a production environment], and another >notable case was the DOS port, for which there was never even >one customer (so yes, Vladimir, we do have some cases where we >invest our own resources in failures :-) As a matter of fact I do not consider GNAT DOS port to be ACT failure. It is very nice. Yes it may be almost impossible to find a big industrial customer that would use it now but on the other hand it helps to promote Ada (especially with Jerry van Dijk SVGA package and Gautier graphic libraries) among number of DOS users. Surprisingly DOS is not dead yet. Moreover DOS still could be used as a simple start up OS for boards that are built around Intel chips providing some basic services for it. After starting Ada application from DOS that application could take full control over hardware and not use DOS at all. This could be considered as an Ada application running on a bare hardware. I am truing to promote Ada now for one of the projects that make use of such Intel boxes with DOS. Hope that result will be positive. If yes then you will be the first to know about that. Now it is a little bit yearly to tell anything more. As I myself do not use GNAT DOS port I have a basic questions: How Ada tasks are implemented and managed in GNAT DOS port ? The answer may be important in adopting GNAT DOS port for the thing I have described above. Probably I will be asked this question soon. Regards, Vladimir. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1999-12-04 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 3+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1999-11-27 0:00 Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. 1999-12-01 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-12-04 0:00 ` GNAT port for DOS (Was:Re: Market Driven was RE: Binding a type to a union.) Vladimir Olensky
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