Re: Early availability of cheap Ada compilers (Was: Re=Fun_with_History why_wasnt_Ada83_object_oriented)

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

"Simon Clubley" <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote in 
message news:jja87m$kna$1@dont-email.me...
> On 2012-03-07, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
...
>> Advertising was hit-or-miss. (And our budget was $0 by 1993.) Lists of
>> validated compilers and the like helped, but you had to know about the 
>> AdaIC
>> in order to get that information. Trade shows like SIGAda were a good 
>> place
>> to find out things, but you had to know about them. And so on...
>
> Explaining this advertising world to someone under 20 is like explaining
> what life was like, say, before television to those of us who have never
> known a world without multiple television options. A non-Internet world
> is totally foreign to them.

No kidding. Even I don't really remember how I found things pre-Internet. 
And the truth is, often you didn't find out about things. I'm sure I built 
plenty of software that I could have gotten from somewhere else (of course, 
me writing it meant it was in Ada, so it at least seemed more reliable).

Pre-Internet, Pre-cell phone was a very different world. (Kids used to wait 
by the phone for their friends to call them...and monopolize the single 
family phone for hours. Now they just monopolize the computer...)

                                Randy.