From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,9aa419a143a673b9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.germany.com!aioe.org!not-for-mail From: Michael Feldman Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Who's using Ada in industry? Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:11:21 -0700 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <13u5rikmodtea4d@corp.supernews.com> <47e4078f$0$23819$4f793bc4@news.tdc.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: zynTg8wSq2Yw2EFOyk7OsQ.user.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 SeaMonkey/1.1.8 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20549 Date: 2008-03-22T14:11:21-07:00 List-Id: Niklas Holsti wrote: > Michael Feldman wrote: >> Hello everyone, >> >> After several years of inactivity with the Ada project list, >> I've started to maintain it actively again. > > Very good indeed. > >> I don't want to pad the list >> with tools, compilers, libraries, etc., but rather to respond >> to the question "who is actually using Ada in industry?". > > I suspect that this exclusion of the SW tool industry from the > definition of "industry" may focus the list on the traditional Ada > application areas -- military and aerospace -- and exclude small or > start-up Ada adopters in other areas. This could reinforce prejudice > against Ada in other areas and especially in the SW tools area. Perhaps so, though the list contains items from enough other domains that I don't think anyone can say it's limited to defense and aerospace. Railroad signaling is a very important domain for the public and for Ada; unfortunately it's difficult to get information because that industry is, well, very secretive. > > I understand that a vendor of Ada compilers may be suspected of bias if > the vendor chooses to write the compilers in Ada. But the same should > not happen when a C compiler, or a language-neutral tool, is written in > Ada. Moreover, I believe that the reputation of Java has been boosted by > the fact that many tools for Java development are written in Java. Why > should the same not be true for Ada? If SW tool projects were listed > under their own heading -- perhaps as the last group -- they should not > detract from the impact of the other projects on the list. Done - see below. > > I admit that I am biased, as my own project (and that of at least one > other company in the same area, that I know of) are SW tools and thus > apparently not wanted on the list. Perhaps only large, expensive > projects are wanted? In that case it would be clearer to say so. > Niklas makes a good point, so let me explain a bit further. I'm a (now-retired) college professor with no personal connection at all to any of these projects, and CERTAINLY no interest in pushing big, expensive projects over small ones. I'm not a spokesman for any big industry! I've been maintaining this project list -- off and on and off, now definitely on again -- for a number of years. During the years before that, and since, I've heard from friends in the industry that in order to promote Ada they needed to hear about applications -- "killer apps, if possible:-) -- in real, operating, systems. They thought it was nice that this or that library or IDE or code analyzer was written in Ada, but these tools are "self-referential" in the sense that they are written by developers for developers. So I concluded that I shouldn't focus on tools but rather on fielded apps for people other than software developers. That said, your suggestion to add a tool section to the list is a good one and I will do that. Niklas, please send me info on yours. Others, please help. I do think it sends a negative message to publish a 1-line list, so please excuse me if I wait a while before I publicly add this section, just to give it a chance to build up to a few good lines. Also, please keep in mind the old adage: if you like what you see, tell your friends. If you have a complaint, tell *me*. I don't necessarily read c.l.a. every day, so it make take time before I read others' posts to it. In the two days since I posted my call for contributions I've received at least a dozen e-mail responses. I'll post an updated list in a week or so, after I've had a chance to process everything. Thanks for your help! Mike