Re: ObjectAda 7.2.2 and VB6 DLLs

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

Perhaps Aonix has the wrong address for me.  That might be
why I never receive any information from them.

My current email address for business-oriented mail is
      rdriehle@nps.edu
and I welcome any email from anyone at Aonix, Rational, or other
compiler publishers that would help to keep me current and help
me keep my colleagues at NPS aware of the on-going work with
Ada.

AdaWorks is no longer a company.   After nearly eighteen years of
straight Ada, I made a transition into academia in 2000.  I thought
I notified everyone who needed to be notified.    Perhaps I overlooked
Aonix.

AdaCore has been especially diligent in keeping me informed.  DDC-I
was sending me newsletters every month until recently.

Perception?  Yes the perception of my academic colleagues is that Ada has
all but vanished.   I seem to be the lone hold-out still sneaking it into those
parts of the computer science curriculum where I have some influence.  Other
technical and engineering faculty seem to regard Ada as totally gone since
no one hears anything about it anymore.   We are a DoD educational site,
and our research faculty as well as our teaching faculty have influence on
decisions made elsewhere in the DoD.  Our students learn Java and C++,
but Ada has been eliminated from the mainstream curriculum.   Why?

Perception!   When a language or tool is perceived to have lost relevance, it
will also lose the interest of those who ought to know better.   We no longer
receive Ada Letters at the NPS Library, the library books on Ada are all
out-of-date, those who do know Ada remember Ada 83.     A few know
about Ada 95.

Perception.  There was a time when ASEET would sometimes have its annual
meeting at NPS. ASEET is dead.  At least I have heard nothing about it for a 
very
long time.

Perception.   There is a perception that few projects are using Ada anymore. 
AdaCore's
web site lists a few on-going projects, but an handful does not impress my 
colleagues.
I did receive an unauthorized list of on-going DoD projects that I am not 
allowed to
disseminate, but even that list has projects I know have switched to 
predominantly
C++ and some Java.   I do know of important projects that are using Ada. 
Recently,
I mentioned F-22 in a meeting of some faculty only to be greeted with some 
statistics
about the unreliability of that aircraft -- so far -- with the "so much for a 
so-called
'safety-critical' language."

Perception.  We do need to change the perception in academia so we can begin to 
change
the perception in industry.   We need to publicize successful projects rather 
than keep them
a secret.   I know that Robert Dewar and others at AdaCore are making an effort 
in this
regard, but it is rare to see anything positive about Ada where ordinary 
industry and academic
people would see it.

Several of the major DoD projects for which my colleagues have funded research 
have
consciously eschewed any interest in Ada -- in favor of Java.  As Pascal noted, 
even
Aonix has become perceived as a Java company.    I wonder whether their own 
products
are written in Ada or C++?  Ada or Java?

Perception.  It is not enough to make the case in a forum inhabited by Ada 
enthusiasts.  The
case needs to be made more broadly.   Ada needs to be featured prominently at 
the booths
of trade-shows, not hidden away only to be acknowledged when someone asks about 
it.
For years, Rational acted as if it were ashamed of its Ada past when asked about 
it at a
trade-show.   Those who were staffing the Rational booth seemed to be blithely 
unaware
of its existence.   I wonder if that has changed.   I don't get to go to 
trade-shows anymore
now that I am in academia.  As NPS is a DoD institution, I cannot justify use of 
funds for
an Ada trade-show.

Perception.  It is not up to us in the community to alter perception.  We can 
help, but it takes
money and time.   When I still had AdaWorks, I put a lot of time into writing 
and publishing
articles about Ada.    It was my business to keep Ada in front of the public, 
and I think that
my JOOP, Embedded Systems Programming, Object Magazine, and articles in other 
publications
did help with the perception of Ada as an important part of the the programming 
language
options.   We did get blind-sided by the unfortunately worded memo from 
Secretary Paige,
and that set us back quite a bit.   It also had a negative effect on the overall 
quality of software
decisions within the DoD.   Worse, it altered the perception in the DoD and DoD 
contractor
community when popular computer publications began to proclaim, "Ada is dead." 
That
perception prevails in some circles, notwithstanding our protestations to the 
contrary.

I would like to find some way to resurrect interest in Ada, but it is not the 
role of a lone
college professor to make this happen.   When Ada was my business, I devoted a 
lot of
my time to promoting it through my writing.   I was able to place articles about 
actual
projects as well as articles detailing benefits of the language.   Very few such 
articles are
published these days.

The advent of Ada 2005 should have resulted in a flurry of articles all over the 
place about
the on-going use of the language along with the new enhancements.  There have 
been some
of these, but not nearly at the level we saw for Ada 95.   Magazine editors love 
to receive
well-written case studies -- not case studies touting Ada -- but success stories 
where Ada
happened to be used.   I am no longer working with Ada in-practice on a 
day-to-day
basis, so I have no foundation for writing these kinds of articles anymore. 
However, those
such as Aonix and AdaCore do know who is using Ada and they could develop a set 
of
such case-histories and publish stories about them.

Perception.  Though many of us may have the wrong perception, it is not up to us 
to alter
our own perception.   If those who are publishing Ada compilers and products 
want the
perception to change, they have to take the initiative to make that happen. 
Otherwise,
someone will write a "disappointing" rant about their "perceived" absence from 
the
world of Ada now and then.   I recommend a proactive approach to prevent such 
rants
from occurring in the future.

Richard Riehle


<dave.wood@aonix.com> wrote in message 
news:b67dd669-323b-4a1c-8959-70f7792fd772@w40g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>I hate to be contrarian, but some of the perceptions here are just
> that: perceptions not necessarily based in reality.
>
>> each time Aonix is sending out some news it is far more
>> oriented toward Java or C++ than Ada
>
> For example, I can assure comp.lang.ada that exactly 0% of Aonix news
> is oriented toward C++, other that where we might discuss that C++ is
> an abomination to be avoided. Our last newsletter had 2 articles
> addressing Ada and 5 addressing Java, but the one before that had 7
> articles addressing Ada and 4 addressing Java, thus an even split over
> the larger sample size. This evenness is not by plan, nor are any
> decisions made out of "fear" of talking about Ada. We publish whatever
> news happens to be available at the time, nothing more.
>
> In terms of press releases, we tend to be about evenly split as well.
> For example, as can be seen on our web site, thus far in 2007 we have
> produced 7 press releases specific to Ada, 6 specific to Java, and 3
> that were non-specific.
>
> I don't know how to respond to an anecdote about someone saying "there
> is a single player on Ada and
> we can't risk going this way". It is demonstrably false that there is
> only one Ada player, given that Aonix, DDC-I, Green Hills, and IBM/
> Rational continue to sell Ada products. Granted, none of those
> companies are 100% dedicated to Ada only, but that seems an extreme
> and insupportable requirement. Further, Ada has a very substantial, co-
> dominant presence on the web sites and trade show booths of two of
> those companies. (However, of course it is possible in a given
> anecdote that there is only one player for a particular off-the-shelf
> platform combination.)
>
> Now, I'm not going to lie to you and say that we're not proud to be
> promoting our Java products. They are truly excellent products, far
> and away best-in-class, that represent tremendous differentiating
> value for Aonix. We're proud to promote them and will continue to do
> so, vigorously. There is some theoretical market overlap with Ada, but
> for the most part, the Ada and Java product lines are appealing to
> different audiences. Promoting one does not hurt the other. Typically,
> the customer is either choosing between Ada and C, or between Java and
> C, or between multiple Ada vendors, or between multiple Java vendors.
> Offhand, I don't know that we've ever yet run into anyone who was
> trying to decide between Ada and Java.
>
> I offer here the concluding paragraphs from an article in our May
> newsletter, which I think are relevant to this discussion:
>
> "Truthfully, our Ada and Java solutions share a similar story: safe,
> predictable, reliable, scalable, modular, error-resistant, and highly
> productive tools. We won't bother to argue which language is better -
> we prefer to let the customer make that judgment. Our job is to inform
> our customers about our offerings, not to be language evangelists.
> Evangelism is best left to independent voices.
>
> "My message is this: Java is not the enemy of Ada. I think it can be
> agreed that C/C++ is the common enemy of everyone interested in
> sustainable growth in software complexity. C/C++ does for software
> what oxidation does for raw iron: makes it unsuitable for complex,
> reliable, and long-lived applications. We believe the industry wins
> every time a design choice is made for Ada or Java rather than C/C++,
> and that's what we're all about."
>
> Dave Wood, VP Marketing, Aonix
> dave.w...@aonix.com
>
> On Dec 8, 12:20 am, Pascal Obry <pas...@obry.net> wrote:
>> Dave,
>>
>> Nothing personal but I kind of agree with Richard. I'm also on the
>> mailing-list and each time Aonix is sending out some news it is far more
>> oriented toward Java or C++ than Ada. Sometimes I found even hard to
>> know (on flyers, papers) that Aonix has some Ada background. I find this
>> sad especially since, as you said, Aonix is still Ada oriented... it
>> just looks like to me Aonix "fear" talking about Ada.
>>
>> You may agree or not with me... The fact is that many times I had
>> someone in front of me saying that "there is a single player on Ada and
>> we can't risk going this way".
>>
>> I think, and I have many times said this on comp.lang.ada, it would be
>> very nice to hear from you here from time to time. Yes please Ada
>> vendors, do not hesitate to "spam" this group with Ada oriented news :)
>>
>> Pascal.
>>
>> --
>>
>> --|------------------------------------------------------
>> --| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
>> --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
>> --|------------------------------------------------------
>> --|              http://www.obry.net
>> --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
>> --|
>> --| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595
>