Re: Legit Warnings or not

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Simon Wright" <simon@pushface.org> wrote in message 
news:m2oc0d4lql.fsf@pushface.org...
> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:
>
>> No one uses predefined libraries of any kind in Ada unless they either
>> wrote them themselves or they are part of the standard. Otherwise,
>> people claim that Ada cannot do X even though it is simple to write a
>> package to do X.
>>
>> That would absolutely be the result if we adopted your
>> approach. Hardly anyone would use it, and Ada would be purceived as
>> substantially less powerful.
>
> "No one"?
>
> There have always been real users for the Booch Components. 257
> downloads in the last year isn't zero. I don't know how many of those
> were for commercial use, but I do know that real projects, some in
> aerospace (but I hope not safety-related) have used them.

Yes, I know some people do. But the people who use Booch and the like are 
not the norm. We found this out early on when Ada didn't provide 
trignometric functions. Even though every implementation had such a library 
and there was a secondary standard for such a library that was widely 
available, the perception was that Ada (especially from prospective Ada 
users) did not have such facilities. It simply was bad marketing.

We saw this again with the containers libraries and with the facilities in 
Ada.Directories. Many people felt Ada did not have these facilities even 
though they were widely available. Thus they were moved into the standard.

I'd predict the same result for any library. I'm sure most of the world 
thinks Ada doesn't have a GUI, despite the existence and wide usage of 
libraries like Claw and GTKAda.

I think it has to do with the perception of Ada as a language with a strong 
standard. That leads many to discount anything that is non-standard, even if 
it portable enough to work on whatever Ada compiler you use (like Claw).

Remember that comp.lang.ada users, SIGAda and Ada Europe members, and the 
like are not typical Ada users (something Robert Dewar likes to say 
often) -- you are plugged in far more than the average Ada user, and 
especially the potential Ada user.

                                         Randy.