Re: Ada is getting more popular!

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

Le Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:07:13 +0200, ramon_garcia  
<ramon.garcia.f@gmail.com> a écrit:

> As a newcomer into Ada, perhaps I can have a useful point of view of
> what makes it difficult to enter this language.
>
> Here are my complains in decreasing order:
>
> - Vendor dependency: there are few vendors of Ada products.
Surprisingly, you did not explicitly noticed the higher complexity of the  
language, compared to C, Pascal and others ? If designing a C compiler was  
more complex, then there would be as much less C compilers in the place.

> I don't have a problem for paying for using an Ada
> tool.
Some can say that, but just too few, that is why very little people will  
attempt to go and expect some clients. But we are in another area there :  
GPL efficiently killed little companies and standalone developers and  
created such a context that only big company could stay alive… indeed a  
trouble there. That was just to say why your confession is tiny thing in  
the middle of a desert : no one will go in that desert for a single people  
waiting for them there.

> (I am writing free software at the moment, but perhaps not in
> the future). But, how much? There is no pricing information in the
> Adacore website,
I noticed the same. I agree this is not good commercial practice to not  
display pricing (while this may means this is subject to negotiations).  
Most commonly, prices are not displayed when this is high. And with  
AdaCore, this is high. But some are far less expensive, at least there is  
one, RRSoftware and its Janus Ada (I am afraid this is the only one).

> and if for whatever reason I have an unsuccessful
> experience with them I have no alternative.
The same with GCC. That's true not only with commercial vendors. The area  
of choices is narrow here, as much as it is difficult to go to try to  
become a vendor (for the reason exposed above).

> My message to vendors is that it is more profitable to be the 10 %
> of 100.000.000 sales than 100 % of 1000 sales. It is neccessary to
> have a good free compiler and IDE to build a community.
Not sure I've understood this one. 10% of 100.000.000 sales with a free  
IDE ?

> - Complex language that requries plenty of typing. This can be avoided
> with good developing environments that automate the task, like Eclipse
> does for Java. Adacore's GPS is not too bad, but not nearly as
> polished as Eclipse. At least I would expect to have an option "new
> package" that defines a package spec and body.
In GPS, you may create Python plug-in for that.

> Or that declaring a
> function in the spec creates an empty body
You have GNATStub for that.

> - Missing language features. Such a complex language must have design
> issues. I find suprising that Object'Pool_Address extension from GNAT
> is not standard.
You are, and every one is welcome to submit comment to ada-  
comment@ada-auth.org
Providing you make a robust enough suggestion, with rationals, discussion,  
etc.


-- 
Si les chats miaules et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.