Re: How to Make Ada more widely used?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeld man@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1993Jun8.152222.14698@sei.cmu.edu> gartm@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Mitch Ga
rt) writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

>   As another example, Alsys has put major efforts into making Ada
>products for environments that are thought of as non-DoD platforms.
>Years ago the conventional wisdom was that most Ada users would
>work on Vaxes or Unix workstations.  We went ahead and pioneered Ada 
>for the IBM PC.  This was a big success.  We also put major, 
>expensive, development efforts into producing Ada compilers for IBM 
>mainframe environments such as MVS and VM/CMS with the idea of 
>getting MIS applications to switch to Ada.  This was not such a success.  
>But you can't say we didn't try.

I'm delighted to see Alsys responding to this goading :-)

For years, Alsys essentially refused to talk to the universities. This
seems to be changing, but was certainly true until very recently. To
respond about the VM products, I always wondered why, if indeed Alsys was
trying to target the business world, they didn't try to target the
business _schools_. We have a nice VM machine sitting around at GW.
The CS and engineering students have moved to Unix, but a lot of business
students still write Cobol on the mainframe. Look around that environment;
you'll see that GW's not alone.

If that compiler is not "moving" in business, how 'bout donating it to
schools with VM machines? AdaWorld is a decent interface. Set up a
_small_ budget for supporting it; schools using compilers for _teaching_
require precious little support.
>
>   Right now Alsys (and Meridian) are working on Ada for Windows NT.  
>I can't speak for Meridian, but inside Alsys the hope is again that
>this product will help Ada to expand into the general programming 
>market.

Well, according to my limited reading (InfoWorld), Microsoft has placed
_thousands_ of beta copies of NT with developers (I think 50,000 was the
number I saw). Mebbe Alsys oughta get on the stick, get its NT compiler
into beta form, and drop it for a song into some of those NT beta sites,
before everyone gets completely locked into C++ there. How's that for
a constructive idea? If the NT compilers are as late as the Windows
compilers were, they won't make a dent because everyone will have
locked into Microsoft or Borland. Will the Alsys NT compiler hit the
market as soon as NT does? Will it be priced comparably to the C++
high-end products for developers? If not, forget it.
>
>   Yet another example is Ada 9X itself.  The Ada vendors will be
>making major investments in implementing 9X, and the object-oriented
>and information systems features that will be added are more for the 
>general market, to compete with C++ and COBOL, than for the DoD market.  
>Upgrading Ada compilers to 9X will be expensive and will be done 
>largely to try to compete in the general programming market.

Many of us in the education world would be DELIGHTED to act as beta
testers of your 9X compilers as they come together. Given the amount
of hand-wringing the Ada world has done about Ada in the universities,
I'd have expected by now that the vendors would be ringing my phone -
and my colleagues' phones - off the wall, trying to get us involved
- under nondisclosure if necessary - in the 9x work. Guess what?
They're not. We ain't gonna beg this time.
>
>   I share the frustration of Mike, Greg, and others that Ada hasn't
>been as big a success in the non-Mandated world as we would like.  
>But I think their statements that lay all the blame on the Ada vendors 
>are untrue and unfair.  We *are* trying to expand the use of Ada.

Well, I'm not exactly _blaming_ the vendors, merely continuing to remark
on the myopia that most of them have - either publicly or privately -
admitted. I'm not making this up; surely you know that.

I don't want to be unfair to Alsys. Alsys' attitude shows definite
signs of paradigm shift, and I applaud it. Keep it up, guys!
Keep the faith - maybe it's not too late!

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-5296 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
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