Re: Creating markets (long)

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

In article <35k5f5$h4k@dayuc.dayton.saic.com>,
James Hopper  <hopperj@dayton.saic.com> wrote:

>>"Good question, Mike. How many Ada programmers do _you_ know that use
>>Macs?"

>Well, i know of about 20 actually.  I also know that we don't buy 
>tools for pc here unless they support both platforms.  if
>we cant buy a product for both pc and mac we have made a decision to
>buy unix tools instead as both can get to them using xwindows.

>thus a vendor which does not support both platforms looses both
>mac and pc sales here!  of course the unix vendors love this ;-)

Good policy, IMHO.

The point of my sardonic remark about was, of course, that they have it
backwards. The question should have been "How many Mac programmers
could we entice into using Ada?" But true to form, they didn't see
the potential. It's probably too late now, but when Pascal and C
were fighting it out for the loyalty of Mac developers, Ada had a
chance. Once Apple decided Pascal was dead and C++ was the politically
correct (PC in both senses :-)) language, thre was no hope.

Stories were afoot at the time that Apple was, at one point, interested
in there being a good Ada system for the Mac, but they were not
able to reach agreement witht the Ada vendors on how to make it happen.
Don't ask me for details; I don't recall at this point, except that
Apple was talking semi-seriously to somebody in the Ada industry
but they just could not comes to terms. Oh well.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER.
"Pork is all that stuff the government gives the other guys."
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