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From: smcneil@netcom.com (Sean McNeil)
Subject: Re: Ada saved by gnat (was Re: Where's Aetech?)
Date: 1995/04/03
Message-ID: <smcneilD6HD57.D0I@netcom.com>#1/1
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distribution: inet
sender: smcneil@netcom.netcom.com
references: <3lphat$i0g@news1.delphi.com>
organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1995-04-03T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <3lphat$i0g@news1.delphi.com>,  <tmoran@bix.com> wrote:
>>Funding GNAT was an extremely cost-effective way to boost the number
>>of Ada programmers.
>And how much money was spent on market research to find what sort of
>customers currently use Ada vs C, why, and what might cause them to
>change (in either direction)?
>
>>Without GNAT, there would have been no widely available compiler that
>>implemented Ada 95 features for the past 18 months.  AETech's
>>compiler was Intel/DOS or Intel/POSIX only, and was not FTP-able by
>>the new generation of Internet junkies.
>
>[Basically alot about fractions.] ;)

I have been working at Hughes for a while and David Naiditch just started
an introduction class to Ada 95.  I got up and told everyone about the
GNAT compiler and brought floppies with the OS/2 and DOS versions to the
class.  There was alot of interest in GNAT even after I pointed out it's
deficiencies.  Some people were just glad to have a syntax and semantic
checker.  I personally have not used GNAT that much, but that will change
as soon as I have a reason to use it.  I think that if all work on GNAT
was to stop now, it would have still been worth the effort.  I can't
imagine how many people will be exposed to Ada 95 by using GNAT.

In summary, as long as there is a fraction (i.e. not zero), then GNAT
has done a good job.

Sean McNeil