Re: AdaMax? (was: ada to C++ translation)

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0203060759.495623f6@posting.google.com...
>
> No, that's a different analogy altogether. HDTV's problem isn't lack
> of openness, its just the normal ramp-up problem for any new
> technology. The end of this story has yet to be written. That fact
> alone makes attempts to draw analogies w/ programming languages
> unsatisfactory, as no real conclusion can be reached.
>
O.K. We're probably just concentrating on two different things. If I'm
interpreting correctly, you are focusing on open standards vs proprietary
architectures - indicating that proprietary eventually tends to lose out.
(Although exceptions - to a point - can be found. Apple & IBM locked up
various architectures and still succeeded in making money on them for a
while - and "for a while" can be "good enough" in the world of business.) I
think my concentration was more on a "whole product" view where VHS had an
advantage over Beta that "superior image quality" alone couldn't compete
with.

Definitely agreed that the story for HDTV isn't over. But for it to succeed
and eventually supplant standard TV, *lots* of things have to be in place:
Camera and editing equipment, broadcast and cable bandwidth, VCR/DVDs, HDTV
sets in consumer's homes at a "critical mass", etc. To that extent, there
*is* some analogy between Ada and HDTV - better quality up front, but not
all the pieces in place for it to take over the market. (I don't believe
that the story is over for Ada either. :-)

> I'd say its still wrong from one perspective though. Programming
> languages don't really resemble media formats much at all. If I have a
> player for one media format, it generally won't handle a competing
> format. Either way, for that player to be worthwhile for the
> purchaser, people have to develop content that works with it. If "The
> Lord of the Rings" is only release using another format, your'e hosed.
>
True - but just as you need translation equipment to get an HDTV picture
onto a standard TV picture tube, you need an Ada compiler that targets the
appropriate hardware. Id est, I write my movie script in Ada & then have to
translate it into film, VHS, DVD, MPEG streams, etc., as needed to get it to
work on the equipment in question.

I did say all analogies can be picked apart, didn't I? :-)


> Languages don't work that way at all. If I've got a C compiler, but
> Fred chooses to use Tea (fictional language) to produce his programs,
> that really doesn't hurt me at all. As far as the users are concerned,
> they really can't even tell the difference.
>
Presuming, of course, that the quality of your end product is equally as
good. And at the same cost. And we regularly contend here that Ada tends to
produce better quality. Much as HDTV makes a better quality picture. If Tea
is a better language than C from the standpoint of producing more reliable
end products that get to market quicker and at a lower development cost,
then Fred *is* hurting you by using Tea. The end user doesn't care about the
underlying technology, but he does care about a lot of things that the
language can impact.


> For that reason, I don't believe formats should *ever* be used as
> analogies with computer languages. They just aren't analgous.
>
Never say "never"? :-) Sure, the analogies can fall apart rather readily.
I'd just contend that often there is a lesson to be learned there that might
help us understand better how to promote Ada. To that extent, the
introduction of a new format (be it TV, music, etc.) might be useful to
study. We can't say "Ada is doomed to fail because it is identical to Beta",
but we can say "What made Beta fail and is there something similar working
to undermine Ada?"

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/