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Date: 21 Sep 93 23:51:20 GMT
From: psinntp!witch!mlb!mbayern@uunet.uu.net  (Mark Bayern)
Subject: Re: A sad story
Message-ID: <227@mlb.win.net>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

 
In article <1993Sep17.204844.19059@hellgate.utah.edu>, Mark Atwood (matwood%per
uvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu) writes:
>I work for a small military contractor and have a few small (<20KLOC) Ada

  ... deleted stuff was here ...

>I called up the salesdroid of our Ada vendor, and had him send me the glossy
>pamphlets, etc for the cross-compiler.  Silly me, I didn't ask for the price,
>assuming that it would be about the same, or maybe a little more than our UNIX
>and DOS compilers.
>
>A few weeks later he drops by to shake hands, answer a few questions that one
>of the developers has, and give out passes to Tri-Ada (couldn't make it).
>While he was there, I asked to get the price for the cross-compiler.
>
> $30+K and $100 per RTE
>
>Our jaws dropped.  Now maybe I was naive, virginal and unexperenced in
>pricing, the boxes we are building have to cost just a few hundred bucks each.
>
>So we are now using C/asm on a MC68HC16.  And now I'm going to be able to
>afford a really nice ICE.
>
>Sorry Ada, I love you, but I can't afford you.
>


Thank you, thank you! THANK YOU!!!

I'm a regular here at pointing out that those prices are simply out
of sight.  It seems I'm ignored, or someone tells me that I've got
to compare prices to a unix workstation.  Why?  Why can't I
compare prices to what a normal commercial user would use?

BTW, I never got past the $25K cost + 5K required first year
support. You're telling me they then want $100/RTE copy?

Mark

PS--my news souuce is currently about 3 days behind --  sorry
about the delays