I disagree with the suggestion to inundate this list with scores of
daily "$$ -- Midwest, 2 programmers wanted" ads.  There are other
places open to that.

However, I certainly agree that proven information about the adoption
of Ada for various projects is useful and good Team-Ada material.
More success and adoption stories would be great indeed.

For instance, one measure of interest in Ada is that the Ada Home Web
site (http://www.adahome.com/) receives over 8,000 visitors per month
(essentially measured by unique IP number, so it's likely to be an
underevaluation).  Not the same 8,000 each month, mind you: there have
been about 25,000 visitors in the past 6 months.  And the trend has
remained "up" over the past three years.  (Note: less than 10% of the
visitors seem to come from academic sites.)  This would seem to
indicate that interest in Ada keeps growing.

I think Ada's troubles are not merely bad feelings about the perceived
job market.  E.g., if we compare Ada to Java, the PR department is almost
non-existent ($15 million in the hands of government employees will
not do anything as compared to similar, or ten times more, money in
the hands of private companies betting their future on Java).  What
are Ada vendors doing to promote their products?  Do they look at Ada
as a static market to be preserved, or as a potentially growing market?
Are "we" somehow relying on (abysmal) PR from the US DoD?  It seems
difficult to tell.

Here's something I was told recently by a vendor of Ada tools: "Our
marketing budget is zero."  That to me illustrates how much they value
getting new customers, people who already use Ada or who might be
convinced to use Ada because of the great tools available.  A market
does not thrive without market-oriented producers.  How many Ada vendors
are market-oriented, and what market(s) do they target?

What lies in Ada's future?

In 1995, I was frequently asked "what are the chances of Ada 95?"
My answer was invariably: "Technically, Ada 95 is great; for the rest,
we should know better in two years."  Now we're in 1997...

Magnus

Magnus Kempe -- [log in to unmask] -- http://www.ksce.com/
President, Kempe Software Capital Enterprises
La Gentilhommiere, route d'Essertines, CH-1416 Pailly, Switzerland
Tel/Fax +41 21 887 8442