Re: Cohen: "Ada As A Second Language" - 05 Update?

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

Dr. Cohen works for IBM and IBM has very little interest in
Ada.

Even Rational, a company now owned by IBM and originally founded
to build Ada compilers and tools, has pretty much lost its way with
regard to Ada.

It is an economic issue, as well. Since the compiler publishers can no
longer charge inflated prices for Ada compilers for a captive customer,
as they could during the years of the mandate, the economic incentive
has diminished.   That fact, coupled with the fact that IBM, for the
most part, has never demonstrated any interest in nor competence
in, Ada, rules out any liklihood that Dr. Cohen will given the resources
he needs to update his book.

I originally intended to update my own book, Ada Distilled.  I had hoped
to be able to do so by this Spring.   However, economics again prevails.
The school where I teach has abandoned any interest in Ada, and I am
required to focus my attention on other topics.   The text of Ada Distilled
is in the public domain, pretty much as open source, so anyone who might
want to update it, as a consortium, or as an individual, is free to do so. I
would only hope that such an effort would be carried out in the spririt of
the original work with an emphasis on clarity tempered with brevity.

Richard Riehle

"pakman" <pakman744@nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:YImdnaBvGOMUjK_bnZ2dnUVZ_ualnZ2d@comcast.com...
> Greetings,
>
> As a reviewer of Cohen's Ada as a 2nd Language, 2nd ed, I had contacted Mr. 
> Cohen and asked him if he had any plans of updating his excellent text for Ada 
> 2005.
>
> He replied that he did not have any plans to revise the text. I suspect his 
> work has taken him away from keeping up with Ada 2005.
>
> Most unfortunate, as I've considered Mr. Cohen's text the be the most complete 
> and nearly perfect of all the Ada texts.
>
> Perhaps if we petition IBM and Mr. Cohen he might reconsider.
>
> I would be willing to review the text again.
>
> John Cupak
>
> "PnkFlyd" <pnkflyd831@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:1177680878.226297.151180@s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>> In a previous thread many people mentioned that they use Cohen's book,
>> as do our staff here at my work (15 Ada programmers).
>>
>> Cohen's website 
>> http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/ncohen.index.html
>> does not mention any recent activity in the area writing a 3rd edition
>> to incorporate Ada05.
>>
>> Have any of you heard from Cohen any interest in doing so?  Do you
>> think there is enough of an interest to make it a financially viable
>> option that we could possibly champion?  I would hate to see Cohen's
>> excellent book not be picked up by new Ada programmers just because
>> the book is "out of date".
>>
>
>