From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c6e9700a33963193 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Al Christians Subject: Re: The future of Ada Date: 1999/03/10 Message-ID: <36E6ADE7.86A76235@easystreet.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 453455926 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <36E690FA.4B9C@sandia.gov> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news7.ispnews.com 921086690 206.103.58.38 (Wed, 10 Mar 1999 12:24:50 EDT) Organization: Trillium Resources Corporation MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 12:24:50 EDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-03-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Gordon Dodrill wrote: > > A few weeks ago someone in this newsgroup mentioned that > Ada is a $100M industry. If this number is reasonable, > then assuming a loaded salary of $120K per year, there are > only about 830 full time Ada developers. > This is a complete non-sequitur. The $100MM figure was given as the worldwide market volume for Ada tools. If spending on tools is (pick a number) $5,000 per tool-user, per year, that is 20,000 developers worldwide using Ada. Figure 1% of the C++ market. Although Ada is designed to give long-run benefits, if you are making good use of Ada and it meets your requirements, it may also be giving you substantial short-run financial benefits, i.e. lower cost this year to develop what you must develop this year. Management always likes short-run benefits, i.e. fast $. Tell them that even if you ultimately have to convert to C++, there is a big and expensive productivity chasm during the period in which the change is made, and that you can finance the switch with the savings from using Ada for a while longer. Then, if and when Ada gets to be more exensive than C++, you can take the leap. Maybe that day will never come. If that doesn't work, then tell them that Java is much more like Ada and would be easier to switch to than C++. Tell them that it would be wise to wait for Java to stabilize, for better Java development tools to proliferate, and for more efficient Java VM's to show up. That when Java gets to be a better choice than Ada, you will change to Java instead. That day might never come either. Al