Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada?

[chris <spamoff.danx@ntlworld.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:


 > It may not be entirely fair to criticize those who want to debate
 > language issues - its a newsgroup and its on-topic, so if those
 > subjects come up, it isn't at all counter-productive.

Yeah, sorry everyone!  It was unfair of me to criticise people 
discussing those issues, and it was certainly unfair to dismiss them out 
of hand.


> What you describe are things that could be fixed with some version of a 
> Conventional Ada Library. Especially things like tools for manipulating 
> a variety of standard file types (images, sounds, movies, etc.) - but I 
> wouldn't stop there. Any of the things we see in libraries for Ada or 
> other languages that are hanging around out there as either part of the 
> compiler or an add-on being sold or given away somewhere is fair game 
> for a library. With imagination, Ada could even go beyond that and make 
> itse3lf *more* useful than any other programming language out there.

I wouldn't mind contributing to such an effort if time permitted.


> What I'd suggest is that if you believe as I do that a common library 
> full of lots of utility code is a good thing for making Ada more 
> popular, then agitate to get it. Vendors and the ARG are sensitive to 
> what people are asking for - especially if they are paying customers. 
> Come up with ideas for what you'd find useful in a library and make 
> those ideas known. Be willing to help out in some manner if/when the 
> opportunity is there.

The problem is I am not a paying customer, and the ARG have 200X on 
their minds now.  It's a bit late in the game to add something like this 
to 200X, especially since it doesn't even exist yet.  Also if it lies 
with the ARG (perhaps not as part of 200X), things might move more 
slowly because they a) don't have the resources, b) they've got other 
issues to deal with and c) they're volunteers (afaik).

I think the best bet is for someone (or some small group) to build a 
library of useful things and then once it's in some useful state, open 
it up to others maintaining and adding to it (that doesn't prevent 
releasing it or accepting patches or ideas, just be semi-strict about 
the size of the core development team).  The problem if a load of people 
jump on is that there'll be a lot of enthusiasm for a few weeks then 
it'll all die down.  If one person does it, the problem becomes 
portability.  It's hard to make everything portable when it's a one man 
show - sometimes portability is only possible in the spec, maintaining 
different implementations is hard on your own.


> I think its possible to make Ada more useful with a library. I 
> sympathize with your tolerance level for trying to collect up artifacts 
> to do a job. I think you're right - most programmers are *not* going to 
> search the net endlessly for all the pieces and struggle to get it all 
> pulled together and working. It needs to work out of the box. That's why 
> its important to have the involvement of the vendors in defining and 
> producing a library - so that it will just work right out of the box. 
> Find ways to try to help that to happen & maybe we'll get some results.

This is why things like .Net (shudder) and the Java platform are good 
imo.  Languages automatically get the opportunity to use the wealth of 
things available on the platform.  (Some of) The problems with either of 
these are a) vendor lockin (esp. in .Net) and b) performance (esp. in 
Java).  If performance isn't an issue, then those are good choices.

IMO if people want languages to succeed, porting to either of these is 
no bad thing.

Chris