Re: is ada dead?

["Mark Lundquist" <up.yerz@nospam.com>]

"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote in message
news:2$l9ZPZiDd4x@eisner.encompasserve.org...
> In article <9iv1pd$3va$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, "Marin David Condic"
<marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:
> > One of the things that would go a long way to countering the
misinformation
> > and overcoming the objections about tools, etc, would be to have an
> > inexpensive development toolkit sitting on the shelf next to the C++
> > environments with equivalent & better features at a competitive price.
>
> But there is not one C compiler, there are many.
>
> That brings up another problem Ada faces, a lack of competition.

Hmmm....

Exclude for the time being the niche players in the C market, e.g. compilers
targeting microcontrollers, vectorizing compilers etc...

For the broad market, virtually every C compiler supplier is a platform
vendor.

So while there are many C compilers, there are no C compiler companies.  So
do these compilers really compete against each other?  How many platform
adoption decisions are driven by competetive factors relating to C
compilers?  None!  And I'll bet that even extends to IDE factors, e.g. when
Windows is chosen over Unix or MacOS, Visual Studio is *not* part of the
reason (even if VS is really great -- I'm not saying this is because it's
bad).

So I would argue that if lack of competition is an issue, comparisons with
the C market don't illustrate it...

Also, someday there really may be just one C compiler! :-)  It's possible
that the platform vendors will all switch to gcc as their "next generation"
compilers.  (Of course this is subject to the broader question of whether
the platform builders will move future OS investment to Linux, since ISV
support for 3rd-tier OS's has dried up.  A platform vendor cannot survive
without an application base).

> Advocates are happy just to get one compiler for an environment,
> but there is never the competition that gets one vendor trying to
> outdo the other in features desired by the customer base.
>

No, but if there were a single Ada supplier, if they were giving me what I
want I'd be happy whether or not they were motivated to outdo another Ada
vendor...  Of course the motivation has to come from competition against
something, and in this case that something is all the other languages!  That
is, even a single supplier has to be responsive to the market, unless it is
a captive market.  A single Ada vendor will die if they blow off their
customers/prospects, just as surely as will a vendor operating in a more
obviously "competetive" market.  If they don't want to die, they'll continue
to be innovative and responsive.

> I believe that is also a shortcoming of Freeware, GPL, etc.
> Supporters are inclined to rally around the (single) flag
> than try to do something with broader appeal to the public.

I'd argue that that in the open source space, incremental improvements are
rightly seen to be more cost-effective as subjects of "incorporation" rather
than "differentiation".

-- Mark