Re: Improving the first contact with Ada

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:22:39 +0200, Ludovic Brenta  
<ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
>> Sorry, I know Ada is about content and the image it radiates,
>> esthetically, maybe the least of your concern (I don't point you
>> directly Ludovic) but the web site of ADAIC is a time machine to
>> ~1993.  I came across that site often and I left it as many times
>> because I though this was an obsolete site!
>>
>> Seriously, it needs refreshing!
>
> I agree.  Maybe that's the problem with Ada people: they spend too much
> time writing quality software and not enough doing marketing.  I try to
> do my part in the technical marketing department but I'm not a webmaster
> or a graphics designer.  I think you'd get the same kind of anwser from
> most people on this newsgroup.
If may give my opinion.

1) Most of time, people who says “software designers are poor graphic  
designers”, are themselves poor software designer. They stop on graphic  
design, because this is the sole thing whose quality they are able to  
evaluate (does not only applies to Ada, this also applies with web  
applications written in JavaScript and the like).
2) People seeking for documentation, should be aware that, when seeking  
for documentation, documentation should come first! Not graphical design!  
What can you expect from someones who run away from a graphical design and  
prefer to go elsewhere, with may be a better graphical design, but lower  
quality documentation. Look at Jean Pierre Rosen's AdaControl : may some  
others sites has a better graphical design than his one, but none has such  
an application as AdaControl. A choice must be made and every one is  
responsible for his/her choice.
3) AdaIC has a graphical identity, if it change it, pretty sure many body  
gonna ask themselves what happened (“is it still the same AdaIC ?”)
4) AdaIC design is not so bad, it is even good (well balanced and  
constant). Old fashioned ? What was nice 15 years ago is ugly now ? So  
people 15 years ago all had bad taste ? Something is silly in this  
assertion, and even some famous web designers agree that this is a silly  
point of view (some lough out loud when they here about so called “Web 2.0  
graphical style”).
5) If you want to differentiate from others, don't copy everyones else  
graphical identity, get yours.

Hope I did no went too much off-topic.

-- 
There is even better than a pragma Assert: a SPARK --# check.
--# check C and WhoKnowWhat and YouKnowWho;
--# assert Ada;
--  i.e. forget about previous premises which leads to conclusion
--  and start with new conclusion as premise.