RE: Windows CE?

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@rleif.com>]

From: Bob Leif
To: John McCabe et al.
This thread is illustrative of the major problem with marketing Ada. Windows
CE is obviously a potentially good market for Ada. Unfortunately, it appears
that the compiler companies are reticent about creating a product on
internal funding. Since the original market for Ada was primarily directed
toward the Defense Department, the compiler vendors have had little
experience with the consumer market. In most companies, the marketing
department would determine if a market had a good chance for profitability
and management would authorize the creation of the product. In order for Ada
to thrive, Ada vendors are going to have to become more entrepreneurial
including learning how to attract capital. The capabilities of Ada
technology should be sufficient to attract this capital. However,
capitalists look for far more than technology. They look at the track record
of the management team and the projections for return on capital.

I might note that the number of "hobbyists" is potentially large and could
be a source of revenue. However, I suspect that a broad Ada market will
require extremely user friendly tools. I also strongly believe that the
actual core of Ada is inherently easier that that of its competitors: Java,
C, C++, and BASIC.


-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of John McCabe
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 8:01 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Windows CE?


On 21 Sep 2001 10:13:25 -0400, Stephen Leake
<stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:

>john.mccabe@emrad.com.nospam (John McCabe) writes:
>
>> <snip>
>> Of course you can justify not doing so by saying there is no demand
>> for such a product but this may be one of these cases where people
>> don't even stop to consider that there may be an alternative to M$
>> eVC++ and eVB unless the alternative is very visible.
>
>I read Robert's post as saying something like:
>
>"If you want us to consider producing such a product, please make a
>formal request for an evaluation thru our sales office".

Having read a number of Robert's postings before on currently
unavailable GNAT versions, I read it as "contact the sales office and
we'll see if we can negotiate some way of making it available at your
expense".