Hello All, Just got back from OOPSLA last night. Currie's on his own for now. He'll be there thought Wednesday. I helped on Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon. I ran into some of the opinions that you've been talking about. I met several people who were once Ada programmers or who programmed Ada in college. I met a lot who thought that Ada was for the military only. I even met someone who thought that the DoD had given up on Ada because the mandate was gone. Some thought Ada was not object-oriented. I met someone who was burned by Ada (several years back due to bad compilers, etc) and would never go back. One of the things I tried to make sure everyone got was the "Why Ada?" pamphlet. I was hoping at the very least that it would open their minds a bit. We had a bunch of flyers for the commercial success stories as well, which also helped. One person asked about Ada in communications, and I pulled the mobile communications flyer from the rack. The $10 CD helped also. I told people its their chance to try Ada at home. We had several buyers. Telling Java or would-be Java programmers about AdaMagic also helped. I gave those who didn't buy the CD a flyer about the SIGAda web site. Most seemed pleasantly surprised with what we showed them. Bottom line: the SIGAda booth at OOPSLA _is_ helping a bit to change people's perception about Ada. Oh, yeah, I had to sigh when Alan Kay, the keynote speaker, had a slide with Ada spelled as "ADA". Gary -------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Kephart, Software Engineer | Investment Technology Group, Inc Phone: (213)270-7544 | 400 Corporate Pointe, Suite 855 Fax: (310)216-0933 | Culver City, CA 90230 mailto:[log in to unmask] | http://www.itginc.com Team Ada member | "The Future of Trading" Disclaimer: these are my opinions, not ITG's.