Creating markets (long)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

The recent posts from Jim Thomes, Jean Ichbiah, John Goodsen, and others
from time to time, about Ada's "small market" characteristics have
really started me thinking about whether, indeed, markets can be created.

I am convinced that they not only _can_ be created, but it happens all
the time. All one needs to do is look at the incredible variety of stuff
available in any retail store, especially in foods and cosmetics, but
also in other areas.

Large food and cosmetic companies sink tremendous resources into inventing
products, test-marketing them, running focus groups, developing ad
campaigns, etc. If L'Oreal, Chanel, General Mills, and Kellogg's waited
for hordes of customers to write the specs for their products, they
would be out of business pretty fast. Inventing new products, then
convincing folks to buy them who never knew they needed them, is indeed
the very essence of retail-oriented business.

This approach has been so successful that some industries are now using
"counter-advertising" (if I can coin a phrase) techniques, to try to
convince the public that these companies _didn't_ create a market.
The two that come to mind are

(1) the tobacco industry, which - under pressure for targeting young
    folks, minorities, and other "target" groups - has taken to
    advertising that "all" they are doing is providing a _choice_ of
    cigarette to people who have already _decided_ to smoke. Whether
    or not you believe this is a disingenuous ploy designed to get
    the FDA off their backs (I do...), it is certainly a change in
    advertising. They insist that thre is limitless demand for their
    products, which they had _nothing_ to do with creating. Yeah, right.

(2) a certain brand of chewing gum (I forget which) that, recently,
    has advertised essentially "it's a new kind of gum _for people who
    chew gum._" Right. Dentyne, Chiclets, Freedent, and others, had
    _nothing_ to do with creating this huge demand for gum. Sure.

Think of the scented, sexy pictures that arrive tucked into every
issue of every magazine. Naturally the makers of these perfumes (to
which a friend of mine is horribly allergic!) have _nothing_ to do with
this huge demand for perfume. They just sat back and waited for the crowds
to arrive, then satisfied their insatiable demand for smelly mag inserts.

Let's switch to the software business. Do you think that millions of
mainframe users were rioting in the streets because of an unfilled
need for an Apple II electronic spreadsheet? Of _course_ not. The
VisiCalc developers had a neat idea, worked it through to fruition,
then marketed and sold the hell out of it, creating not only a market
for their own product, but also for the Apple II, making it a plausible 
computer for business (this was years before the IBM PC).

Now to the Ada business. I can bore you all day with anecdotes, but will
limit myself to one that I think encapsulates the attitude. A certain 
Ada compiler vendor, asked about making some additional investments in 
their Mac compiler, responded "How many Ada programmers do you know
that use Macs?" (This was before Apple shifted its allegiance to C++
and was pushing Pascal as the main developer language.)

Does this answer seem as backward to you as it did to me? A market
orientation, it seems to this academic, would have led them to ask 

"How many Mac programmers are there in the industry? 
"How many college students are cutting their programming teeth on Mac 
   Pascal? 
"How can we capture a share for Ada of the overall Mac developer market? 
"Will capturing Mac programmers with an Ada compiler lead them to
   demand Ada even if they move to other platforms?
"Is developing a compiler that would grab those programmers and students, 
   blowing the doors off the competition, within our financial grasp?"

Instead, they asked how many Ada programmers use Macs. The answer _had_
to be "nearly none", because the Ada compiler for Macs was nearly unknown 
in the Mac community. Doesn't this seem bizarre to you?

I would get off the vendors' case for good if they would show some
intellectual honesty, and step forward and say "OK, guys, we blew it;
let's put our heads together on how not to blow it again."

Instead we get bleating from a few vendors about how _Uncle Sam_ blew
it (whenever anything goes wrong in this country, the government is
supposed to fix it), and dead silence on the matter from the rest.

SURE, Uncle Sam blew it. What surprises me about that fact is that
it should surprise anyone. Did the Ada community REALLY not see it
coming? (Well, some of us did.)

One quote from the note from John Goodsen: "Borland was making Pascal
compilers for mass use on PC's." That is a true statement. Breathes
there an Ada company that made a compiler for mass use? Nope. They
were so focused on the government's mandate that it never occurred
to them how they could leverage all their great stuff out to the masses.
We all managed to talk ourselves into a few non-facts:

(1) Ada is DIFFERENT from other languages. REALLY different.
(2) Mere mortals could NEVER learn to get good at it, or even get their
    arms around it. College freshmen? Forget it.

Hardly a day goes by that I don't get an e-mail note from an undergraduate
somewhere in the world, usually a place I didn't think had any interest
in Ada. "Thanks for doing GW-Ada/Ed, Mike," they say. "Now we see why
you advocates think Ada is such a great thing." There are _masses_ out
there using this thing; it has exceeded my wildest expectations.
And it's only a toy, as we all know. 

Sure, the fact that GW-Ada/Ed is free has something to do with it. 
Absolutely. But I get notes asking about interfacing to system calls,
graphics libraries, and the like. All those bindings we keep talking
about. "No," I say, "for that you ought to buy a commercial compiler;
the student prices are comparable to Borland's."

Rational, Alsys, AETECH: the market is ALL yours. We created it for you.
GW-Ada/Ed has propagated like (excuse the expression) a virus. It
runs out of steam pretty fast; it was _intended_ to run out of steam.

There is a thirst for industrial-strength compilers for the masses.
Are you ready to capture that market? The demand is there. Where is
the supply?

Can Debbie Weber-Wulff be correct, that the Open Ada compilers are
no longer sold to students in Germany? In which other countries
is this true? Is it true in the US?

Cheers -

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"Pork is all that stuff the government gives the other guys."
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