Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

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

To some extent, yes. But remember that it is not now nor has it ever been
the case that the book publishers are the ones to make a language popular.
They merely follow a trend that is already set in motion by other factors.
When Ada came out I remember seeing dozens of books on it from various
sources. Everybody had high expectations - thinking Ada might become the
next Cobol. That obviously didn't happen and it wasn't the lack of books to
blame for it.

Given that there are a handful of Ada books available free of charge on the
net and the language doesn't change that fast, I'd say there were adequate
resources in that respect. A few more books that dealt with more specialized
areas might be helpful. ("Ada and compiler writing" or "Ada for realtime
systems" or "Ada for graphics & gui applications" or similar specialties.)
Actually, creating some specialized books and putting them on the web might
be a key factor in getting Ada adopted in some new domains. In other words,
stop trying to generate an interest in Ada and instead generate an interest
in something else that, oh, by the way, happens to have all this clever Ada
code that goes with it.

Any academics out there with an interest in some new area of computing that
might want to use Ada as a tool?

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

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    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Adrian Hoe <mailbox@nospam.adrianhoe.com> wrote in message
news:3E22E61E.9020400@nospam.adrianhoe.com...
>
>
> Argh... Chicken and egg problem again! ;-)