Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

["Nick Roberts" <nick.roberts@acm.org>]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:20:35 GMT, Ed Falis <falis@verizon.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:41:27 GMT, Richard  Riehle  
> <adaworks@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Are the Ada 83 compiler publishers partly to blame because
>> of their greed or shortsightedness?    Well, maybe not entirely,
>> but there are those in our community who do see it that way.
>>
>> Richard Riehle
>
> After putting 16 years of my life into working for one of those
> Ada 83 (and 95) compiler publishers, and constantly striving to
> put good value products on the street, making zero profit year
> after year, I have to say I resent these remarks.

Ed, I'm pretty certain that Richie was not implicating Alsys in his
comments. Everybody knows that Alsys was one of the few companies
that struggled to bring a good Ada compiler to the masses (I was one
of those masses).

I specifically remember that any development system for the IBM PC,
at that time (mid 1980s) was inevitably compared with Borland
TurboPascal, which set the price bar for that kind of thing at an
unprecendentedly low level, whilst setting the convenience bar at
an unprecendentedly high level, and was hard for anyone to compete
with.

It is easy to forget now that few people had a personal computer
then. Nearly everyone then who would become one of the hoards of
professional progrmmers in the nineties cut their teeth on a
computer either at work or at university. Ada was not (in the
1980s) available at any workplace outside the military (and a
few aerospace and communications companies, and one French train
company), and available at very few unis.

I think Ada publishers failed to do all the things that, with the
aid of hindsight, they should have done to collectively promote
the language. But I think this was mainly because they did not
feel that it was their role to do that sort of thing, rather than
just sheer greed as such. Of course, they /should/ have realised
that it /was/ their role -- for the simple reason that nobody
else was going to do it -- but I think typical corporate
attitudes were against that kind of thing in the eighties.

> There are plenty of other "members of the community" at whom
> fingers could be pointed.  But I'll refrain because it won't
> change a thing.

Quite.

-- 
Nick Roberts