Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

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

The "Is it dying or is it growning" debate can't really ever be settled
anyway since there's no hard data on which most people would agree that
would indicate anything meaningful about the direction. (I'd suggest that if
it *really* grew in a large, substantial way, it would be so obvious nobody
would ask the question.) So basically, anybody expressing an opinion on the
subject either way is equally uninformed - there is no data so all you've
got is opinions based on perceptions.

I don't think its a waste of time though to discuss what would possibly make
Ada more popular with the masses. That's the kind of "market research" that
helps a product satisfy the needs of more people. For example, the
discussion here about libraries seems to be identifying some common
collections of desired utilities, from which maybe something emerges. The
discussion about having some kind of standard GUI/tools seems to be
clarifying a need and possibly seeing consensus getting built on which of
several possibilities ought to be contenders. Any discussion of what people
want out of a language can be helpful in setting future directions.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0204180702.3f703c23@posting.google.com...
> dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote in message
news:<4519e058.0204171040.33abd3c3@posting.google.com>...
>
> I felt I should do more than just a "me too" on this. I've been
> hanging out in c.l.a. for about 8 years now, and I got sick of the
> "Ada is dying" doom-and-gloom talk after about the 3rd Greg Ahnorian
> post I read. After 8 years of supposedly declining usage, there would
> be no one using it today but 3 kids and a monkey if those folks were
> all right. Instead it seems the Ada community is more healthy than
> ever before. No one is still being "forced" to use it and there's no
> DoD sugar-daddy around bankrolling projects any more, yet there are
> all sorts of wonderful new projects and initiatives comming out on
> what seems like a daily basis, from both companies and volunteers.
>
> Every language has its detractors that love to believe, no matter what
> the truth of the matter is, that it is just about to shrivel up and
> die. For whatever reason, Ada has always had more than its share of
> such people. I think that Ada's doom has been mindlessly predicted so
> much for so long that lots of otherwise sensible people have started
> to believe it. Its high time we quit listening.
>
> --
> T.E.D.
> Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
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