Re: Can Ada by popularized faster ?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, No Spam wrote:
> Dave Wood wrote:
> > 
> > I find your letter interesting in that it provides an eclectic
> > mix of accurate deductions, naive assumptions, positive
> > spirit, and nascent defeatism.  It's probably a decent
> > microcosm of the "Ada community"!  I have a few comments to
> > contribute.
> <lots of good stuff snipped>
> 
> Here's an idea which I have suggested before and would do myself were I
> to have the available resources:
> 
> Think of why C got so popular: The language itself wasn't the issue - it
> was all the other things that were bundled around it. The Unix OS, Lots
> of platforms it was bundled with, availability on small systems for use
> in Universities, Single Board Computer manufacturers targeting compilers
> to their specialized little computers, etc. etc. Pretty soon it was the
> volume of applications that got it entrenched.

We all have theories about why <product X> became popular and the
obviously superior <product Y> failed abysmally. I suspect that most 
of the theories are bunk, but your proposal has a hint of what I suspect 
is the right explanation. Unix was the agent that allowed C to gain a 
foothold in certain (techie/early-adopter) markets, and once enough
people were exposed to Unix (and therefore C) lots of other little things
got built (compilers for every machine for example) and there were enough
people who knew C and  would tell others in their "market" that soon we
had a positive feedback cycle and boom!, C is popular even among more 
conservative late adopter type engineers.

> I don't think anyone is going to go out and write the next Great
> American Operating System in Ada any time soon, but if they did, Ada
> would quickly get a toe hold on a large market. Developing some similar
> important million-user-app would be as effective, but what would it be?

I bet that a new OS in Ada would have little chance of success, unless
it offered something really different. How about an embedded OS, or 
one for hand-held computers or something? I bet that market is pretty 
saturated too, and I'm just ignorant of who the leaders are...

> My personal interest would be to get a relatively inexpensive single
> board computer that had Ada riding on a PC platform with the support
> stuff needed to plug my code into the SBC and drive it around. Boards
> like this regularly sell for a couple of hundred dollars and typically
> have the development environment bundled in at some nominal additional
> cost. (This means you get a C compiler, linking, loading and debugging
> software, interface to the PC from a serial port and some other goodies)
> So SBC developers have latched on big time to C just because thats what
> they got when they bought into the board architecture.

Isn't there a recurring discussion on this ng about the lack of an Ada 
compiler which targets the 8051, or some other popular embedded
controller? 

> I think there's some reasons Ada has an edge - it's use in college level
> courses represents a big buy-in of future developers. All it needs is
> some additional push because of an installed base of users of some
> application other than the compiler itself.

Hmmm, I and my classmates at some unnamed institution were exposed to Lisp
in college level courses, and that didn't seem to help Lisp :-). 

Seriously, for Ada to succeed it should have a niche; looking for a killer 
app to propel it forward is improbable. I like your SBC idea, but that
market seems controlled by C now (is it?). Where would you propose
focusing a development effort to dislodge it? 

Have you read any books on marketing ("Crossing the Chasm" and "The 22
Immutable Laws of Marketing" are my faves) for insight into the situation? 
The main idea I have here is that much attention should be focused onto
*one* niche at the outset, before expansion into broader markets. I think 
the embedded market is a natural, though that may require a bit of
subsetting unless you only want to tackle memory rich environments.

-- Brian