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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3d6589e7b2c60444 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-08 05:22:26 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-xit-09!supernews.com!pd2nf1so.cg.shawcable.net!residential.shaw.ca!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: employment with ada Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 08:21:06 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Message-ID: References: <626e8ae.0305011636.5e899da3@posting.google.com> <4mo7bvc2n70k6eikm3muu2965nbo3m77ov@4ax.com> <3EB415CB.6D97B14D@adaworks.com> <1f3abv0c5majluvng6g19aheea80i63res@4ax.com> <61gcbvgb9ooldmb6jbn1ef3os1kk1hnfgg@4ax.com> <20030505084553.7a4ef0f8.falis@adelphia.net> <20030505162702.44c61d2f.falis@adelphia.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: d1.56.b4.d3 X-Server-Date: 8 May 2003 12:21:31 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:37062 Date: 2003-05-08T12:21:31+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote in message news:uof2enb7p.fsf@nasa.gov... > > While this is all true, consider what happened with Java. Sun marketed > it agressively (for many reasons), and thus created the demand for it. > There was no demand for it initially. They could have picked an > existing language, and targeted it to a virtual machine. > Oh, sure. Absolutely. Without a doubt. I've argued here in the past that if Ada had a big, institutional sponsor that was willing to sink some money into developing the language infrastructure and into a big marketing effort, it would be doing a lot better. Back in the day when the DoD was that big sponsor, there was a problem: The DoD isn't a business and a) doesn't know how to market a product and b) doesn't see that as their job. The world was different back in that time and mistakes were made - what are you going to do? Remember that Ada was originally targeted for embedded systems back in a time when computers were substantially smaller & weaker. It was not uncommon for DoD projects to go off and develop a custom language & compiler just for the project. Projects built lots of their own support tools. Ada was substantially bigger than most of these languages and exceeded the capabilities of much of the development hardware that was out there. Technologically, it was too far ahead of its time, but as hardware got more powerful and people began to expect more, from a marketing perspective, it was behind the times. It was too big a language for any one project to go out and custom-build a compiler for and projects were already turning away from that anyway in favor of buying off-the-shelf tools. So you didn't have the customary means of "bootstrapping" the language into use. If we were to undertake it today, I think there would be a number of things that the DoD (or any institutional sponsor) would want to do: Fund the development of a compiler and support environment on some popular platform. Make sure the compiler could be readily retargeted to other architectures. Make the compiler readily available for either cheap or free. Set aside a budget to buy lots of adds in trade journals & elsewhere for at least 1..2 years - basically get marketing experts and fund the marketing. They came *dangerously* close to doing this with Gnat, but pulled back too soon for it to take effect. They funded the initial development of Gnat, but pulled back before it was a real "product". ACT took it over while it was still a Science Fair Project and, to their credit, turned it into a viable product. But ACT didn't exactly come at this with deep pockets, so there wasn't money in the budget to develop an IDE, a GUI, libraries, etc. They could only move at a slow pace developing what the rest of the world takes for granted with any "serious" language compiler. Again, to their credit, they are getting there, but not in a timely fashion. (Every day that Gnat/Ada doesn't have what you get with Java, is another day that some project decides to go with Java, right?) They also didn't come at this with a big marketing budget so whatever their marketing department is doing is basically trying to make bricks without straw. They can't buy magazine ads, radio spots, get interviews on network TV or NPR, etc. (Sun succeeded in doing a lot of that with Java.) Had the government set aside a pile of money to fund ACT for a couple of years to do all of the above, Ada95 would have been a substantially bigger success and they would have protected their past investment in Ada by making it viable for the big DoD contracts that were or could be using it. But then again, this isn't the proper roll for "government". It belongs to someone like IBM or Microsoft. And, of course, they have no vested interest in Ada and would have wanted something "different" anyway so that they didn't inherit all the bad reputation Ada acquired and they would be percieved as doing something "new" and "innovative". At this point, I don't see how Ada could acquire a big institutional backer. It may be possible, but I don't know who that would be or what they would see as a benefit to themselves in doing so. Unless Ada were to possibly "piggyback" on some other technology, such as a new PC operating system or database or some similar product. > As usual, the situation is complicated ... > It always is. Sigh... MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "Going cold turkey isn't as delicious as it sounds." -- H. Simpson ======================================================================