From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_05 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 30 Dec 92 04:01:40 GMT From: seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman) Subject: Re: C++ vs. Ada -- Is Ada loosing? Message-ID: <1992Dec30.040140.10412@seas.gwu.edu> List-Id: In article <1992Dec29.161150.23301@nosc.mil> sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Samps on) writes: > > While I can't defend Alsys's specific prices without more information, >one justification for the high cost of a compiler for a naked machine is >that the vendor has had to develop an entire executive (rather than tying >into an existing DOS or UNIX) and must amortize that cost over a small >customer base. Basically, the high cost is for the RTE and the cross- >compiling utilities, not for the compiler itself. > This seems a weak justification. I'll agree that Ada may need a more sophisticated RTE than C, but is it 25 times more so? And the argument about a small customer base is self-fulfilling, as we have discussed many times in this group. Perhaps a cross to a really weird DoD-specific board might have a small base, but a standard OTS 80x86 package? The back cover of IEEE Computer, Dec 92, has an ad from Computer Systems Architects (CSA). They have a Transputer board you can add into a clone. The education price for this board is $395, and it includes a parallel C compiler and an occam2 compiler, _for the Transputer board_. I don't know what the commercial price is, but it's probably <$1k. CSA mentions that Ada is available. I assume this means Alsys, the only compay supporting this configuration. Is the Transputer RTE _that_ much hairier than the occam one? Or parallel C? BTW - I bought one of these CSA babies at the Computer Science Conference last year. It's a nice piece of work. Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School of Engineering and Applied Science The George Washington University Washington, DC 20052 USA (202) 994-5253 (voice) (202) 994-5296 (fax) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet) "Americans want the fruits of patience -- and they want them now." ------------------------------------------------------------------------