Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Perhaps some other vendors may come out with a different answer, but it 
> isn't looking like they want to start jumping on the bandwagon, does it? 
> It wouldn't much matter *how* it got built (all-volunteer or some mix of 
> funding, from some TBD sources, etc.) The interest level from the 
> vendors is asymptotically approaching zero as far as I can tell.

> So maybe a library is a bad idea. (I don't think so) If so, then I hope 
> the vendors or ARG can come up with some *other* idea that is going to 
> generate some new interest in Ada. Why is it I can hear Danny DiVito in 
> the background reciting his speech from "Other People's Money": "I'm 
> sure at one time there must have been hundreds of companies out there 
> making buggy whips...." (Substitute "Ada Compilers" for "Buggy Whips" ;-)

I think that in one sense asking the Ada compiler vendors is necessary. 
  But in another it is irrelevant.  If we know what users want and 
provide it, the compiler vendors will be asked by THEIR customers to 
provide and support it.  If the end users don't want it, won't use it, 
or can't use it, then this whole effort is a waste of time.

Of course, to some extent compiler vendors are Ada programmers/users, 
and they are in touch with their customers and their needs.

Some years ago, I worked out the right solution--form an Ada software 
engineering guild, or for that matter a software engineer's guild, and 
one of the functions of the guild would be to provide and support a 
library that could be used by its members.  (Including corporate 
members.)  If you could get the system to insist on only using guild 
licensed programmers in the correct disciplines, and guild software 
engineers on certain types of projects this would finally give software 
engineering a realistic model to work with.

Anyone who really is a software engineer not a glorified programmer, 
knows that the only way software engineering is taught is not in school 
but by mentoring.  And most corporations don't have a mechanism for 
recognizing mentoring effort, and people who have in effect graduated 
from apprentice to journeyman, or from journeyman to master.

But all that is way beyond what we can accomplish here.  But I do feel 
that doing the registry right will give us both a better idea of what 
exists and a way to track what is used or wanted.

Finally, note that once we do get a group well organized to create a 
common Ada library that will be used, we can survey both c.l.a and 
SIGAda to find out what people think they want--and what they currently 
use or have used, etc.