How Ada is failing socially

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

     If Ada is so great, and the US government is spending so many billions
on Ada software development, why is the marketplace for Ada tools and
libraries non-existent?
     I just received in the mail today the Summer '91 issue of "The Connection"
a directory of software development tools and products distributed by
"Programmers Connection (North Canton, OH) 800-336-1166)". They distribute
pretty much any programming tool for PCs, Suns, Macs and Vaxes, though most of
their products are for PCs.
     The bulk of their products are language compilers, language tools and
language libraries. In the Summer '91 issue, I made the following rough count
of products by major languages:
			Ada          -       10
 			Assembly     -       32
			Basic        -       65
			C            -      289
			C++	     -      111
			Clipper      -       38
			Cobol        -       15
			Fortran      -       53
			Modula-2     -       11
			Pascal       -       56

By product, I counted either software tools (such as metric analyzers) or
libraries of source code (such as windowing libraries). I made similar
counts in programming magazines (Journal of Object Oriented Programming,
Computer Language, and Dr. Dobb's Jounral, and got similar relationships).

For some reason, the software market does not think that there is much money
to be made with Ada products, and probably for reasons that have nothing to
do with the technical efficiency of the language.

This scarcity of Ada products has some serious side effects - the apparent
small demand of any Ada products pushes up the price of those Ada tools that
are marketed. Companies entering new software development projects are going
to lean towards those languages for which there are many tools and companies
offering projects, even if the language is lower in quality (i.e. I might not
think C or C++ is perfect, but I do like the wide variety of tools available).
Companies developing new software tools are going to lean towards those
languages where it is clear that money can be made.

For all of these side effects, the ratio of C/C+ products to Ada products,
being great now, and probably greater in the future, will be a strong
deterrent to the acceptance of Ada, no matter how convincingly one argues
that Ada is a better language.

What makes this table weirder is that the number of Ada products should at
least match the number of Pascal libraries, since a lot of the Pascal
libraries could be run through R&R Pastran Pascal-to-Ada converter. Since
Programmers Connection makes it fairly easy to include new products in their
directory, and accept a variety of packaging conditions for projects, it
is strange that so few (i.e. zero) Pascal library companies are not even
bothering to provide Ada versions.

For some reason, something about the DoD and large defense contractors makes
it hard for small companies to develop and market new software products. As
long as this condition remains so (and as long as this problem continues to
experience the apathy of everyone from AJPO down to the lowly Ada software
engineer), Ada will remain a cult, niche language, no matter how great the
language is (or will be with 9x improvements). It amazes me that no one in
the Ada community seems to be concerned that there are so few companies
that can survive making Ada tools and libraries, given the billion dollars
plus going into Ada software development.

It also doesn't help that in the multi-billion dollar commercial MIS world,
someone very big is sending a message that Ada has no role in their future
software engineering plans.

Gregory Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization