Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

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

Ell said

<<No it isn't.  You can win with an inferior product due to other factors.
The overwhelming evidence of which some refuse to accept.>>

No you can't win with an inferior product, winning or success with products
is how superiority is measured.

The trouble is that technical people tend to think that wizz-bang technical
features are what is important. No doubt the Sony guys working on Beta
really thought that image quality was the most important factor -- it was
of course NOT true, and the longer playing time of VHS was what consumers
wanted.

Technical people are always sitting around grumbling that consumers don
t make the "right" choice, but usually such grumbling is just an expression
of incompetence in their ability to figure out what is important.

There are many reasons people buy product A over product B. They prefer
a large company (which tends to get reflected by advertising clout), they
like pretty packaging, they like being sure it will still be around a while
from now, they don't want to feel they are experimenting etc etc etc. The
fact that some technie thinks that super feature X is what is important
is pretty irrelevant.

I saw an interview with one of the guys from the MIT Media lab a few years
ago, saying that he thought that HDTV was completely mis-directed. His
question: "Ask someone on the street what is wrong with TV, they will not
say 'lack of definition'". I always remember this, because I thought it
was an excellent lesson in not focussing on technical excellence.

This certainly applies in the field of computer programming languages.

The mere fact that language X is superior to language Y is certainly not
enough. The issues of continued support are critical. And indeed the
effort in Ada 95 to concentrate on providing effective interfacing to
other languages, something almost completely missing in most other
languages, reflects the understanding that being able to interface to
existing software components written in other languages is crucial.

Often as CEO of ACT, I find that my most important task is to convince
customers not that Ada is superior, they know that, but rather that
they can choose Ada and be sure that support for Ada will be around in
the future. Indeed our entire business plan at ACT is aimed at ensuring
that this is the case. We concentrate entirely on Ada, and we intend
to maintain a small low-overhead operation, allying ourselves with
various tool producing companies, and working on making GNAT easy
to deal with for the tool manufacturers. We believe that this is a
convincing strategy for ensuring that the Ada technology, superior
from a narrow language point of view, is also superior in other terms
that may in the long run be equally important.

Actually the entire free software approach is valuable here. We don't make
our money by charging an arm and a leg up front, instead we are building
are business by gathering customers who are interested in long term
maintenance.