Re: Ichibah flames, and flames out over, Ada 9X

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

>This sentence is a bit hard to understand.  But my best guess of what
>it means is quite far from the truth.  It seems that you have become
>so frustrated with the Ada and DoD worlds that you have stopped talking
>to anyone in those worlds.  That's fine, but then you should try to
>refrain from generalizing about them.  Rest assured that *many* of the
>people involved in Ada 9X have a *huge* stake in the language.  Some
>of the best people involved work for small companies that are quite likely
>to go belly-up if Ada 9X is a failure.  And those that work for
>larger companies have a very large personal stake in the success of Ada 9X,
>both economic and career-wise.

Tucker,
	Let me make it easier to understand.  Consider the general trade
press in computing, with such publications as Computerworld, Software,
Datamation, Mid-Range Systems, Computer Language, Infoworld, Open Systems
Today, Computer Design, the IEEE and ACM general publications, Data
Management Review, and others.	I rarely, if ever, see any ads for Ada
compilers from most of the companies reflected in the Ada9X effort.  Nothing.
  	Consider the general (by general, I mean non-Mandated) trade shows.
Object World, CASE World, Software Engineering XX, etc.  Rarely, if ever,
do I see much of an Ada presence by most of the companies reflected in the
Ada9X effort.
	Sure, I believe that you guys have a "huge" stake in the Ada9X
effort, but based on this behavior analysis, it seems that the stake you
are striving for is the nice cozy Mandated world.  I do not see much
evidence that you guys are taking the evangelizing of Ada seriously,
outside the Mandated world.  I rarely if ever see ads for Ada, trade
show booths for Ada, bingo cards in card decks for Ada, direct mail
pieces for Ada, anything for Ada.
 	I just don't see anything being done to better promote Ada.
Nothing from the DoD, nothing from DoD contractors, and especially nothing
from Ada compiler vendors.  You tell me where are the continually running
ads for Intermetrics, Alsys, Meridian, Verdix, Aetech, etc.  Scattershot
is what I see at best, especially compared to the advertising square inch
space for other languages.

	Thus Tucker, my original concern still holds.  I barely see any
presence of many of the Ada9X people in the non-Mandated world, and am
afraid that what will come out of the Ada9X effort will be a great
language that will be even less accepted in the non-Mandated world than
Ada83.

	Prove me wrong that there you guys have a much bigger presence
in the non-Mandated world. If nothing else, explain to me why Intermetrics
(at least in Cambridge) seems to keep on losing its best programmers
(many of whom are my friends) to numerous C/C++ efforts in the Boston area.

	If nothing else, how about a round of golf at Fresh Pond to
settle this one way or the other.  If you win, I'll admit that Ada has
behind it the best marketing campaign in advertising history, and if I
win, you'll admit that you are all a bunch of parasites (in the strictly
biological analogy meaning).

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