Re: "is ada dead?" A challenge for all of us?

["McDoobie" <chris@dont.spam.me>]

In article <mailman.994606630.15710.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, Michael
Erdmann <michael.erdmann@snafu.de> wrote:

> Such question is always creating the wish in me to prove that it is not
> true, but my experiences with open source projects for Linux makes it
> more and more diffcult to prove this.
> 
> If you look as the open source market which is mainly driven by the
> commonly available operating system (e.g Linux) you will find that C,
> C++ and a lot of other lagnuages are mutch more dominant then Ada.
> Typical for this situation is e.g. the fact that most of the Linux
> distributions claim to support Ada, but the compiler is in fact  NOT
> part of the distribution. Or how many applications of a typlical Linux
> distribution are written in Ada? I think the answer is about 0!
> 
> Any how the situation is not that devistating as it sounds, because we
> got GNAT and several support tools
> (eg. GLIDE, GVD...) to develop Ada SW for Linux.
> But the effect of this effort on the open source market is more or less
> not existing. There are still no major open source Ada applications
> available!
> 
> I think the nagative formulation which is behind the wisenheimer
> question  "is Ada dead" araises from such a situtation because most of
> the peoples asking this kinf of questions are doing this from a beginner
> point of view. In most cases beginners have there first contact  with
> programing using open source systems such as Linux, where using C/C++ is
> considered as normal doing without reflecting about it.
> 
> In order to overcome this situation, the interest of the peoples asking
> such questions should be attracted by interresting Ada written
> applications, in order to change there attitude in such a way, that they
> at least ask "..is Ada an alternative for my project?".
> 
> The challenge for us is to gather peoples in the Ada community building
> such open source applications.
> 
> I think good starting point for this was and is the ALT but without the
> "non commercial" effort of the whole  Ada community, this initiative is
> doomed!
> 
> If the Ada community fails to meet this challenge, then at least for the
> "open source/Linux"  domain the language has to be considred in fact  as
> dead, just because nobody needs Ada there!
> 
> This does not mean, that Ada is not itensively used in other domains,
> but the open source and linux community will not participate from there
> work and such questions will araise again and again and.......
> 
> 
> Regards
>    M.Erdmann
> 
> 
> PS: I still think Ada is the better language, but for my next open
> source project i considder of not using it because of all the
> disadvantages it has working on an isolated Ada island.


It seems to me that a way to get Ada more mainstream in the Linux world 
would be for us Ada programmers to start up alot more of our own projects.

Yeah, I know the old tale about re-inventing the wheel. But think about it, 
the concept of the wheel, in todays world is an abstract concept. Who's to
say that with Ada we cant develope better wheels. Better mail servers, 
better Web applications, better ad infinitum? I would also dare to say that 
Ada makes it so much easier to develope better replacements.

Heres a challenge...one that I'm taking up myself. For each Ada developer 
in the group here to find a piece of software that they like and find useful,
and do thier own little re-implementation of it in Ada95, with all the little
benefits that Ada95 offers implemented in addition to what comes standard
with the application.

Personally, I think the server side is where this type of challenge would 
truly show Ada95 for the gem that I've found it to be.

It doesnt have to be a huge project. Just a something simple. An email app, 
a database frontend/client, blah blah blah.

Then we can submit those new applications to the Open Source community,
or do whatever else with them.

Anyways, I figure if the developer likes the application and finds it useful,
then it shouldn't be too hard for them to develope interest in doing thier 
own little implementation.

What do you think?

McDoobie
chris@dont.spam.me