From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c406e0c4a6eb74ed X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "Nick Roberts" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 01:37:26 +0100 Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 0xjV3EJIziHWI6N+RfVMNAX1Apa+scRBiWmxd/qjmZSWafmlI= User-Agent: Opera M2/7.51 (Win32, build 3798) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2704 Date: 2004-08-13T01:37:26+01:00 List-Id: On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:20:35 GMT, Ed Falis wrote: > On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:41:27 GMT, Richard Riehle > 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