Pricing Ada out of Education

[pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)]

  Many schools are beginning to look beyond Pascal and C as their language of
instruction.  Many successful authors are looking beyond Pascal and C for
writing introductory, intermediate, and advanced Computer Science and
Engineering textbooks.

  The two main contenders (leaving out the "odder" languages of Scheme, ML,
and Smalltalk) seem to be Ada and C++.  I don't want to start any discussion
of the merits of these two languages, or of the quality of various language
implementations. But I would like to illustrate some pricing strategies that
make C++ very attractive to Universities (and hence authors who want to write
books).

I was quoted these prices today (1/3/91) on the phone.

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Vendor: Borland (408) 438-5300 (contact customer support)


Product Name    Retail		Education

C++		   200		       70
Professional	   300		      140
Small Model	(Ed only)              40 (64K data/64K code)


C++ Lab pack	10 C++, 1 Doc: $350

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Vendor: Zortech C++ (800) 848-8408

		Retail		Education

Compiler	   200		       75
Developer	   450		      200


Compiler pack	10 Compiler,  1 Doc  300  (+30/doc extra; up to 9 more)
Developer pack	10 Developer, 1 Doc  700  (+60/doc extra; up to 9 more)

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