Niklas Holsti wrote:
> Michael Feldman wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> After several years of inactivity with the Ada project list,
>> I've started to maintain it actively again.
>
> Very good indeed.
>
>> I don't want to pad the list
>> with tools, compilers, libraries, etc., but rather to respond
>> to the question "who is actually using Ada in industry?".
>
> I suspect that this exclusion of the SW tool industry from the
> definition of "industry" may focus the list on the traditional Ada
> application areas -- military and aerospace -- and exclude small or
> start-up Ada adopters in other areas. This could reinforce prejudice
> against Ada in other areas and especially in the SW tools area.
Perhaps so, though the list contains items from enough other domains
that I don't think anyone can say it's limited to defense and aerospace.
Railroad signaling is a very im****tant domain for the public and for
Ada; unfortunately it's difficult to get information because that
industry is, well, very secretive.
>
> I understand that a vendor of Ada compilers may be suspected of bias if
> the vendor chooses to write the compilers in Ada. But the same should
> not happen when a C compiler, or a language-neutral tool, is written in
> Ada. Moreover, I believe that the reputation of Java has been boosted by
> the fact that many tools for Java development are written in Java. Why
> should the same not be true for Ada? If SW tool projects were listed
> under their own heading -- perhaps as the last group -- they should not
> detract from the impact of the other projects on the list.
Done - see below.
>
> I admit that I am biased, as my own project (and that of at least one
> other company in the same area, that I know of) are SW tools and thus
> apparently not wanted on the list. Perhaps only large, expensive
> projects are wanted? In that case it would be clearer to say so.
>
Niklas makes a good point, so let me explain a bit further. I'm a
(now-retired) college professor with no personal connection at all to
any of these projects, and CERTAINLY no interest in pu****ng big,
expensive projects over small ones. I'm not a spokesman for any big
industry!
I've been maintaining this project list -- off and on and off, now
definitely on again -- for a number of years. During the years before
that, and since, I've heard from friends in the industry that in order
to promote Ada they needed to hear about applications -- "killer apps,
if possible:-) -- in real, operating, systems.
They thought it was nice that this or that library or IDE or code
analyzer was written in Ada, but these tools are "self-referential" in
the sense that they are written by developers for developers. So I
concluded that I shouldn't focus on tools but rather on fielded apps for
people other than software developers.
That said, your suggestion to add a tool section to the list is a good
one and I will do that. Niklas, please send me info on yours. Others,
please help. I do think it sends a negative message to publish a 1-line
list, so please excuse me if I wait a while before I publicly add this
section, just to give it a chance to build up to a few good lines.
Also, please keep in mind the old adage: if you like what you see, tell
your friends. If you have a complaint, tell *me*. I don't necessarily
read c.l.a. every day, so it make take time before I read others' posts
to it.
In the two days since I posted my call for contributions I've received
at least a dozen e-mail responses. I'll post an updated list in a week
or so, after I've had a chance to process everything.
Thanks for your help!
Mike
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