Re: Need the Same Promotion for Ada

[Charles Hixson <charleshixson@earthling.net>]

"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>
wrote in news:9gl2kv$abb$1@nh.pace.co.uk: 

> I have said here before that the best way to get Ada out of
> the "niche market" and into the "mass market" would be to
> get a really nice, integrated development kit into a
> shrink-wrap box with a book and get this in a corner gondola
> display at CompUSA, et alia. Thousands of programmers are
> totally unaware of the existence of Ada and they don't stand
> much of a chance of becoming aware of it when the number of
> books about Ada on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, Fryes,
> etc. is at or near zero and their exposure to Ada products
> on the shelves at Best Buy or CompUSA is at a similar level. 
> 
>... 
> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Senior Software Engineer
> Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> Enabling the digital revolution
> e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/
...
> 

Here's a bit of a problem.  The obvious answer would be to 
package Gnat, Gtk+, Glade (the dialog builder, not the annex) 
with an editor a bit better than AdaGlide or JGrasp and a really 
good installer.  Some nice help files.  A few utilities.  The 
problem is that I don't know how often you could sell it.  
Basically what you are doing here is putting together a 
distribution that's a compiler instead of an OS, and it's not 
clear that you could recover your costs.  And creating an 
installer that could successfully install that combination on a 
computer picked at random isn't trivial.  (E.g., I still haven't 
gotten Glade to work on my Win95 box.  I haven't worked at it 
much, but it's a lot simpler to get it working on one box than 
one all of them.  Particularly the one's that haven't been 
released yet.)

It should also work on Linux, but that shouldn't be as much of a 
big deal.  It looks like an easier job, and if it doesn't, you 
don't loose as much.  Not only is the market smaller, it's 
easier to get all of the pieces, and get them working.  And most 
of the users will be more adept (Winxx systems make being adept 
quite difficult).


-- 
Charles Hixson

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