Re: Why is Ada succeeding in Europe?

[world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian)]

>Well, it seems fairly obvious that Ada continues to be accepted in
>European countries more quickly than in the U.S.  What is(are) ROOT cause(s)?

    As someone has already mentioned, Europe has a long history of useful
languages similar to Ada (Algol, Simula, Chill, Pascal) that there was
enough recognition by management in Europe of these languages to make the
acceptance and choice of Ada easier.  This is purely a marketing viewpoint:
prior exposure in the commercial media made it accept for Ada evangelists
to make the case for Ada.  In the US, with not much of a history with
these languages, the near virtual absence of such languages in the general
trade press created no prior exposure for such concepts, so that making
the case for Ada has been difficult, if not impossible.

     The other reason is that in some sense, what goes on in Europe is
somewhat irrelevant to the future software industry (an extreme point for
the following reasons).  The entire software and computer industry is
undergoing a massive paradigm shift from centralized mainframes to distributed
processing.  This shift has been made possible by the desktop computer
revolution.  Big mainframes are becoming history, except for having a role
as massive file servers.  Just look at IBM, Fujitsu, and other companies
who have lost income and stock value as thsi point hits home.
     The new players are companies like Microsoft, Novell, Lotus, Borland,
Intel, Apple, and other companies who have grown since the early 1980's
into the powerhouses that they now are, dominating the future of computing
for the foreseeable future.   And all of these companies have been and
are using C/C++, were weaned on C/C++, and will continue to use C/C++.
Many of their employees were in school during the 1980's when C/C++ spread
like wildfire, and are now carrying on in that tradition.
    Thus when management are companies look around to make their decisions,
most of the language exposure seen in the trade press is for C/C++/Smalltalk,
and most of the salespeople they see are from the companies cited above that
are based on C/C++.  Thus it is at great risk from them to choose Ada, as
evidenced by its dismal market share outside of the Mandated world.

    Short of nationalizing Microsoft, the DoD is going to have no chance of
seeing Ada83 or Ada9X win greater market share, and especially not Ada9X if
any of Dr. Ichbiah's concerns prove correct.

    Your question, like many other such questions, are complex questions of
socioeconomics that the DoD has refused to address with regards to Ada.
Until it does, Ada will continue to be a niche language outside the Mandated
world where people spend their own money, undermining implicit assumptions
behind the Mandate.

    For example, I have been privately circulating a proposal to do a study
on the actual demographics of programming language use outside the Mandated
world over the last ten years - a more exhaustive analysis of the type of
demographics I occasionally post to comp.lang.ada.   The response I have
gotten to date is "What's the point?".  It's that attitude that condemns
Ada to its fate as a great niche language.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization

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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178