Re: Ichbiah's letter to Anderson: Here it is

[world!srctran@decwrl.dec.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

Mike Ryer from Intermetrics writes:

>Even if we had Ada compilers for the Intel, Motorola, and similar chips,
>we wouldn't necessarily advertise in magazines.  We run ads for our C
>compilers to a) inform people that they exist, and b) transmit the message
>that our products are reputable and popular.  We don't expect anyone to
>choose C over Fortran, Smalltalk, or Ada because they saw a C compiler
>ad.  We don't expect to convince anyone that our product is the best via
>an ad either.  Ads yield little more than "awareness".
>
>For Ada, people find out about compilers by checking the validated compiler
>list.  We don't need the "we exist" sort of advertising.  The presence of
>our C compiler ads gives us the "we're reputable" image which carries over
>to Ada and our other business areas.

    If this was any other language, and you any other company, I would
not give a damn what Intermetrics does.  By Ada is a federally mandated
language on which national security is somewhat dependent, and you are
acompany acepting tax dollars in support of this policy.  While your
advertising strategy might be  in the best interests of  Intermetrics,
it is not in the best interests of the country, for the following 
reason.  Many in the non-Mandated world tend to be interested in 
buying a technology based on the exposure they see for it in ads and
articles, independent of any company's particular products.
    People are not seeing Ada anywhere in the non-Mandated press, while
they do see other languages like C++ and Smalltalk.  Thus your self
interested advertising strategy, which I would normally support, is
unacceptable as long as you remain an Ada contractor.  The language,
despite vendor claims, is ten to thirty times less thriving than C/C++
in the non-Mandated world.

    So I stil disagree.  The Ada vendors and contractors have to make an
extra effort to evangelize Ada in the non-Mandated world, as long as you
accept Ada tax dollars dollars and support a questionable national policy
(i.e. the Mandate).  Get off the Ada dole, and I don't care what you do.
But as long as you are part of the effort, especially something as
marketing-ly important as the Ada9X redesign, you have an ethical 
obligation to push Ada whereever possible.

     And your hopes for Ada93 in the OOP fray make little business sense.
You will be offering too little too late to a community making its
decisions now.


>Have you noticed that the major Ada vendors are reporting greatly increased
>sales this year?  The use of Ada is at an all-time high.  Reports of her
>death are greatly exaggerated.

    Until I see the breakdown of your statistics, I don't believe this.
Come to Wadas, where I will hopefully be presenting endless statistics
showing that by any measure of thriving in the non-Mandated world, that
Ada is ten to thirty time less thriving than C/C++ (in terms of
products offered,  corporate use, new job offers, advertising lineage,
trade show presence).

    Because of the Mandate, and DoD tolerance of contractor and vendor
behavior, Ada is and will be a niche languge like Forth and Prolog in
the non-Mandated world.   As an independent observer noted in his
Business Week article, "Ada is an obscure DoD language".

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