RE: C++ vs. Ada -- Is Ada loosing?

[mbayern@mlb.win.net (Mark Bayern)]

Jack Beidler writes:

>> ... Practically all of the posting are missing the "real"
>> reason. It has to do with economic considerations (read
>> my company wants to make more money).

I'm afraid you're absolutely correct! But you don't have to look
into the update cycle to see Ada's commercial problems.  Look at the
original cost of getting the language.  Want to use C in your
embedded 80x86? Both MSC and TurboC list for (much) less than
$1000.  That and a little work and you're up and running.  Ada? How
about $25,000 for a license, and $5,000 for the _required_ first
year 'support'! 

If I choose to use C I've invested less than $1000 in software,
instead of $30,000.  I've also invested a little work in porting
the C runtime startup code to the embedded system, but during that
time the team has been learning the details of the hardware.  Plus
the money is spent locally on labor, instead of spent to some large
Ada firm.

(Hmmm... now I'm having problems remembering why I choose Ada for my
commercial products.  Oh yeah! It had something to do with
validated compilers and run-times that wouldn't have any bugs or
support problems, silly me!).

Mark