Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.lhota.adarose@verizon.net>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
news:c5itve$25vpm$3@ID-77047.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Then you should probably know that OS/2 was better than Windows. How your
> theory would explain its fault?

I worked on a project using OS/2 1.1. Granted, this was before the PM, but
one could not help but be impressed with some of the features of OS/2,
including:

-    True multi-tasking (i. e. not the kind that depended on applications
periodically calling Yield);
-    Multi-threading (not supported in Windows until NT / 95 ); and
-    File system that supported longer file names (not just the DOS 8+3
convention).

One could easily argue that OS/2 with PM is technically superior to the DOS
with Windows 3.x. The problem with OS/2 is that it had a few crucial faults
which prevented it from gaining wider acceptance.

The original versions were buggy. I certainly had my share of problems with
version 1.1, although things were more stable in version 1.2 and 1.3.
Unfortunately, it can be very hard to overcome a bad first impression.

As noted many times before, the memory requirements were a deal killer for
many potential customers. At the time of its release, memory was several
magnitudes more expensive than it is today. An organization moving to OS/2
would not only have to buy a license for the OS for each machine; they would
also have to spend several times that amount for adding a memory card to
each upgraded system. You would have to prove big productivity gains to make
the case for this upgrade.

To support legacy applications, OS/2 offered a DOS compatibility box.  If
you did the INT 21H call to get the DOS version, the compatibility box would
return version 10.0! There were some popular DOS applications, however, that
did not run in the OS/2 DOS box. This made the migration to OS/2 even less
appealing. Upgraders ran the risk that they could not continue using their
current applications, and hence would have to buy new software, train their
personnel on the use of the new software, and deal with revising old data
files to be processed by the new software - not to mention any data
compatibility problems that would arise if you wanted to NOT upgrade the OS
on some of your systems. Not an appealing proposition.

A big mistake that MS and IBM made at the time is that they did not do
enough to encourage third-part application development. They charged a
bloody fortune for the OS/2 SDK, causing many developers to take a "wait and
see" approach to doing an OS/2 project. The OS debuted with few native
applications, and a good portion of them were not very good. (There was,
however, a very nice OS/2 version of the Brief editor. It is a pity that
Software Solutions did not profit from this). There was a similar issue with
the DDK, and for a long time OS/2 lacked printer drivers for some of the
more popular printers. I knew of OS/2 shops that actually set up their
machines in dual boot mode, so they could edit their work in OS/2, then
reboot to DOS when they needed to print!

Let's face it: most users do not want an OS. They want to run applications,
and they get an OS as a means for doing this. Between the problems with the
DOS box and the lack of native applications and drivers, OS/2 was a hard
sell, in spite of the fact that it was technically superior to DOS / Win
3.x.

Bringing this back to Ada, it is not sufficient for Ada to be a technically
superior language. There are certain, practical requirements for Ada to be
an appealing tool for new development. Ada 0x needs to address these
requirements, for otherwise Ada could suffer the same tragic fate as OS/2.