Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[Gregory Aharonian]

     A recent article on object oriented technology illustrates why the Ada
community only has a short amount of time to achieve Ada acceptance, or
seeing the language relegated to a niche role like Forth and Lisp.

     The article is titled "Users making plans for object technology
applications" and is in the August 30 issue of Network World, page 45.  In
the article, there is a table on percentage of users planning to adopt
object oriented technology, based on a survey of 186 managers at some of
the largest 1000 companies.  The Table is as follows:

		   PRECENTAGE OF USERS ADOPTING
		    OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY

			1994		 2%
			1995		11%
			1996		34%
			1997		53%
			1998		71%
			1999		80%
			2000		88%

      Assuming that this survey reflects general industry future plans (and
no one in the Mandated world has any equivalent data), and given that 88%
pretty much closes up a market, it would appear that the Ada community has
seven years to achieve significant market share before it is impossible for
Ada to play any significant role in the software engineering and MIS worlds,
and therefore to be able to help the DoD meet its software requirements.

      If by 2000 Ada is still at its present level of about 1% market share
outside the Mandated World, then the Ada community will have failed.  Such
a market share level will not attract many programmers, many companies to
develop tools, and many third party types to provide products and services
that drive other languages like C++ and Smalltalk.

      Unfortunately, in my humble :-) opinion, I do not think Ada will be
able to have significant market share won for it for two reasons.

	1)  Current Ada tools are two to three years behind those for
	    other languages.  Other than the great Rational tools, most
	    of the Ada compiler environments and libraries are two to
	    three years behind stuff I see for C/C++ and Smalltalk, and
	    even Cobol.  Ada research tools, such as most of the STARS
	    stuff, is as far behind, if not farther.

	    In the software world, a two to three year lead is very
	    difficult to overcome, especially given the cutthroat 
	    competition now going on in the C/C++ world, and the total
	    inexperience of Ada compilers of competing where people are
	    free to choose.


	2)  Ada83 is a great language.  It failed to get much acceptance
	    not because of any deficiencies maybe corrected in Ada9X,
	    but because the Mandated world either didn't care to promote
	    the language outside the Mandated world or didn't know how.
	    Ada9X is a false promise, because the people who botched the
	    job of handling Ada83 (whoever they are since no one wants to
	    accept responsibilty) - those who didn't - still don't and
	    still won't.

    So for those of you with overhead to goto Tri-Ada, keep in mind that
Ada has a window time shorter than the age of Ada to achieve significant
market share, or be dismissed.  And think to yourself, is a community that
displays over 40 booths at its own internal trade shows, while only one
or two booths at public trade shows, is this a community that has any 
chance of actually having to compete where people are free to choose?
-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian                                      srctran@world.std.com
 Source Translation & Optimization                            617-489-3727
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ne]

In article <CCMv60.Bux@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
 writes:

>		   PRECENTAGE OF USERS ADOPTING
>		    OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY
>
>			1994		 2%
>			1995		11%
>			1996		34%
>			1997		53%
>			1998		71%
>			1999		80%
>			2000		88%

It might be instructive to compare similar extrapolated figures
from the manufacturers of hula-hoops, skateboards, and pet rocks.

Look, folks, every fad goes through a phase of exponential growth.
We saw the same thing with flowcharts, structured programming,
gotoless code, and Query By Example, to name but a few fashions
once destined to sweep the world.  There were even languages
designed without a GOTO statement.

Object-oriented programming is one way of solving problems; one of
many ways.  When the dust has settled, all the other ways will still
be around, and languages that do not enforce a single "one size fits
all" discipline of problem solving - general-purpose languages - will
still be the mainstream.  Remember LISP?  Remember APL?  Remember
Prolog?  And don't panic.

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[Gregory Aharonian]

>>		   PRECENTAGE OF USERS ADOPTING
>>		    OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY
>>
>>      [ .. and more stuff implying trouble for Ada acceptance ]

>Object-oriented programming is one way of solving problems; one of
>many ways.  When the dust has settled, all the other ways will still
>be around, and languages that do not enforce a single "one size fits
>all" discipline of problem solving - general-purpose languages - will
>still be the mainstream.  Remember LISP?  Remember APL?  Remember
>Prolog?  And don't panic.

Do panic.  Whatever new fads that are out there being adopted (CASE,OO,GUI,
multiprocessing,distributed processing,AI,natural language) is not being
done in Ada to any significant degree.  If this was ten years ago, I would
agree, don't panic as the race has just begun.  But this is ten years into
these races, and Ada is nowhere to be found.
-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian                                      srctran@world.std.com
 Source Translation & Optimization                            617-489-3727
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[Alex Blakemore]

>> don't panic.

> Do panic.

don't panic - it's not a productive way to accomplish anything.
but do really enforce the mandate, and focus on promoting Ada outside the DoD.
-- 
Alex Blakemore       alex@cs.umd.edu        NeXT mail accepted
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Without an engaged and motivated human being at the keyboard,
the computer is just another dumb box."      William Raspberry

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!firth]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Aug31203457@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:

>If this was ten years ago, I would
>agree, don't panic as the race has just begun.  But this is ten years into
>these races, and Ada is nowhere to be found.

Sigh. A fair point, and, I must concede, an entirely valid one.  If, indeed,
Ada's main stakeholders continue to support the language in the future as
abysmally as they have in the past, extinction is assured.

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[Michael Feldman]

In article <1993Sep1.084220.10207@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
 writes:
>In article <SRCTRAN.93Aug31203457@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregor
y Aharonian) writes:
>
>>If this was ten years ago, I would
>>agree, don't panic as the race has just begun.  But this is ten years into
>>these races, and Ada is nowhere to be found.
>
>Sigh. A fair point, and, I must concede, an entirely valid one.  If, indeed,
>Ada's main stakeholders continue to support the language in the future as
>abysmally as they have in the past, extinction is assured.

Sigh...Amen.

Mike Feldman

Re: Why Ada has seven years to thrive or die

[Harry Erwin]

In article <1993Aug31.132355.967@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu
(Robert Firth) writes:
>In article <CCMv60.Bux@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com
>(Gregory Aharonian) writes:
>>		   PRECENTAGE OF USERS ADOPTING
>>		    OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY
>>
>>			1994		 2%
>>			1995		11%
>>			1996		34%
>>			1997		53%
>>			1998		71%
>>			1999		80%
>>			2000		88%
>

This is a pretty standard distribution for the acceptance of an innovation
over time (logistic function). Similar patterns are present in the
statistics of conversion to Islam in Visigothic Spain and in the emergence
of industrial technologies in 19th century England. The continued low
level of acceptance of Ada even in the mandated world indicates that the
collapse of the military threat will probably result in the disappearance
of this (and similar) technologies except where its advantages overcome
its known economic weaknesses.

Cheers,
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
Working on Freeman nets....