Re: PDA Ada

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

That's always a dillema for the vendors and I can't blame them too much.
They've been burned in the past trying to build for targets where the end
clientelle really weren't willing to consider Ada in the first place. The
excuse was always "Ada is a non-starter because there's no compiler for my
target..." when in reality there was an underlying attitude of "I don't like
Ada because its not C so I won't use it no matter what you do..."

If the vendors did want to go after the PDA market, it would be a major
mistake to go after it with anything less than a massive effort. People have
already got development kits for PDAs and they aren't going to drop them for
Ada if all they are offered is just another compiler for a different
langauge. In particular, Ada's selling points of reliability,
comprehensibility, maintainability, etc., are simply not compelling in a
market where the apps are going to live for a few months and get tossed out
in favor of something "New and Improved" that will make the marketing
department happy. A vendor would need to go into the PDA market with a
development kit that provided *more* than what is currently available, or
nobody is going to find any advantage to switch.

I agree that Ada could benefit dramatically by getting in on the ground
floor of some emerging technology and PDA's, cellular phones, digital TV and
a variety of other things are still new enough to not be hide-bound in their
ways. But whatever you bring to the table with these folks, it *must* give
them leverage in the time to market area or they have no incentive to
switch.

That's a lot to ask of vendors with limited resources and no clear mandate
to build something.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3DA4E4A8.5C1DEAE0@adaworks.com...
>
> The Ada compiler publishers have always, with a
> few exceptions now and then, operated on a risk
> averse model with regard to products.   I suppose
> that is what we can expect again.  Unless there is
> customer demand, there will be no compiler. Meanwhile,
> there are no customers demanding Ada for PDA's because
> they have other alternatives.
>