Re: Ada-compiler for Macintosh?

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Larry says

"If Intermetrics was just on the edge and had decided to go
ahead with a Macintosh compiler there is no certainty they
would have achieved the degree of IDE smoothness Macintosh
afficianados have come to expect.  Even Metrowerks has not
been able to achieve the degree of integration displayed
by Think Pascal."


In fact there are many different constituencies here. So far the only
interested customers we have in the Mac port are interested precisely
BECAUSE it has a similar interface, and allows them to build System 7
compatible applications.

I quite realize that there are those who want something else. So far
our judgment is that there is an insufficiently large market to justify
trying to satisfy the "give-us-an-integrated-mac-like-ide" desire.

I think you could argue that the original intent of the academic contract
was to generate a much more smoothly integrated version (that is certainly
what Mike's bid on this contract had in mind), but anyway, given the
contract modification that occurred, that is water under the bridge in
any case.

Right now, I very much doubt you will see any major new ada devlopment
effort on the Mac, so the best bets are

(a) to use the Intermetrics Java system
(b) to develop shells around the Machten implementation that make it look
      more like what you want.