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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.66.252.1 with SMTP id zo1mr14900180pac.40.1395219966040; Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:06:06 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.140.91.227 with SMTP id z90mr718872qgd.3.1395219965980; Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:06:05 -0700 (PDT) Path: border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!ur14no9930924igb.0!news-out.google.com!bw18ni16863qab.1!nntp.google.com!hw13no6116923qab.1!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:06:05 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <5151491a-14c3-4138-bcb5-f29108aeefb9@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=195.182.34.254; posting-account=bMuEOQoAAACUUr_ghL3RBIi5neBZ5w_S NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.182.34.254 References: <5151491a-14c3-4138-bcb5-f29108aeefb9@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: ANN: Kickstarter for beginning work on a new open-source Compiler From: Maciej Sobczak Injection-Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 09:06:05 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:185195 Date: 2014-03-19T02:06:05-07:00 List-Id: W dniu =C5=9Broda, 19 marca 2014 00:23:57 UTC+1 u=C5=BCytkownik Shark8 napi= sa=C5=82: > The working-copy of the proposal is here: >=20 > https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwQVNNshW39cTXVOdWxQaVJ5WjA/edit?usp=3Ds= haring Short version: this will fail. Long version follows. The proposal itself is fundamentally broken. You have to be aware that the = biggest challenge for the Ada community is that of industry awareness. That= is, most of the programming community never heard about Ada and those few = that did do not see any reason to invest their time in it. The proposal for= starting a significant project with public funding should focus on the rat= ionale to explain why such an investment makes sense. But your proposal doe= s not even attempt to do that. In fact, I think that the word "Ada" appears= there fewer times than, say, "Delphi". Leaving aside my own relationship w= ith Ada ;-), I see no reason whatsoever why I should give my money to this = project. You can see this problem in the following way: what will happen if you repl= ace the word"Ada" with "Java" or "Scala" in this proposal? It will still be= the same proposal and will still make as much (or as little) sense. Which = means that this proposal is *not* about Ada. It is about your opinion about= how IDE should look like. Which brings us to another important flaw. The Ada (or Java or Scala, if yo= u decide to replace words) programming language was *defined* in terms of t= ext. It *is* a text-based language. If you think it is a problem, you will = not fix it by reinventing the IDE. You have to redefine the programming lan= guage to break its natural ties the text format, but if you take the text-b= ased language and try to work with it as if there is no text, you will fail= . This idea (should I write IDEa?) is not even new, it was already practice= d. I have had a misfortune to work with something like this in the past and= it was utter crap that prevented programmers from doing their work efficie= ntly, because the whole concept isolated the programmers from the existing = tools. You will never solve all problems in the IDE, at best you will end u= p with something that is miserable at some selected aspect of programming w= ork and that instead of enabling programmers to spread their wings, just pi= sses everybody off. Which basically already started by fixing parts of the solution before expl= oring the problem - I'm talking about the precise selection of tools that y= ou have proposed at the very beginning: Delphi + .NET + Mono + InterBase? R= eally? No, REALLY? I just fail to imagine Ada enthusiasts (and you need *a lot* of enthusiasm = to make something as significant) running to contribute to this. Sorry. --=20 Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com