From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_DATE, LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f4fd2,d915617c76bdc179 X-Google-Attributes: gidf4fd2,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,d915617c76bdc179 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-13 21:02:03 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.lisp Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!uunet!sytex!smcl From: smcl@sytex.com (Scott McLoughlin) Subject: Re: Marketing Ada: Is the Sky Falling? Message-ID: Sender: bbs@sytex.com Organization: Sytex Access Ltd. References: Date: Tue, 13 Dec 1994 23:38:09 GMT Xref: bga.com comp.lang.ada:8591 comp.lang.lisp:4392 Date: 1994-12-13T23:38:09+00:00 List-Id: pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) writes: > Is the dominance of C/C++ making all other languages marginal, leading > them to an accelerating spiral of decline. Will these language survive? Will > they survive in niche markets but not prosper (too few companies devoting too > little effort to improving products)? Is this the equivalent of "survival of > the fitest" or "language genocide"? We already know the PC implications [pun > intended] of such a course of events. Howdy, I think that they will survive (not all of them, but some of them). There are alot of hurdles, though. C/C++ has really high _visibility_. It's on store shelves and advertised in popular magazines. It compiles well and makes programs that run well on "low end" hardware. Implementations are often dirt cheap or free (gcc). You can drop down to assembly to do weird stuff easily in many implementations. I think you have to aim right for the sweet spot of the market: a brain dead CPU running a brain dead OS. Other "alternative language" vendors seem to be doing ok: Digitalk's Smalltalk/V, Borland's Turbo Pascal, MS's Visual Basic. I think it helps to offer not just another language, but some other advantage as well. So Digitalk has various MIS related add ons (PARTS, I think it's called). Borland is making a really cool "Visual Pascal" that acts like VB in many ways but makes fast compiled EXE's. Etc. I don't know how fun it would be to "succeed". Think of all the OS/2 designers/implementors at IBM sitting around for god knows how long just _sweating the fat_ out of "Warp" so it will run ok on a 4 meg machine. Blech. Probably lot's more fun trying to get your favorite weirdo language compiler to generate code that will beat fortran on a 200 meg Silicon Graphics box, right? Anyway, most of the world doesn't _want_ a language like C/C++. Too hard. That's just what's "there" in the market place. So get yourself a few million dollars and a sweat shop and a bunch of dumb windows boxes and go to town ;-) ============================================= Scott McLoughlin Conscious Computing =============================================