Re: Why ADA is not prevalent yet?

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

Borland would write a Turbo-Ada if they thought it were profitable. They may
be doing so, although I would guess not. Of course, because of Ada's
standarization, they would have difficulty creating proprietary features
that would lock users into their system. Maybe becaue of Ada's complexity,
it wouldn't be so "turbo". Maybe when Intel's architecture becomes obsolete,
Turbo-Pascal, etc. will pass away ;).

Onto another topic: Ada Prices. I'm just back from Tri-Ada where various
vendors announced new educational prices. I will post a longer, more complete
message early next week. Among the most impressive is a complete
restructuring of Alsys's educational pricing. Single copies to
Faculty/Staff/Students of FirstAda and MacAda are now $144.99 (these are the
complete systems previously sold, not "educational versions"). In quantities
of 26-50 (only one of many ranges in their discount structure) the price is
$100 each. For these site licenses, the University gets only 1 copy of the
software/documentation, but is allowed to duplicate it for student purchasers.
Support is supplied to a faculty contact, not the individual purchasers.
Single copies of their workstation/mainframe compilers (RS/6000,
DECStation/MIPS, VAX/VMS, SUN-3/4, and HP9000/300 are now under $600.

The complete story is coming soon. But I thought this was good news to
spread around immediately. Meridian and Janus are yet to respond.

Rich Pattis


-- 
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  Richard E. Pattis			"Programming languages are like
  Department of Computer Science	 pizzas - they come in only "too"
    and Engineering			 sizes: too big and too small."