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=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b0d569080889afd6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Marin David Condic Subject: Re: A question for my personal knowledge. Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <37373414.74FA7F93@pwfl.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 476291064 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: condicma@bogon.pwfl.com References: <1VEZ2.1515$I51.88140@carnaval.risq.qc.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Pratt & Whitney Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: diespammer@pwfl.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-05-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Siamak Kaveh wrote: > Accepting that Ada is one of the best available programming languages, the > following question comes to my mind: Why BIG PLAYERS of computer industry > (IBM, HP, COMPAQ(Digital), CRAY, Microsoft, SUN...) don't develop their > native ADA compiler? (or they disconnected their development). > > Do their engineers and managers understand that using ADA can improve > quality of their software? > This is always a subject that is bound to start a long chain of reactions. I'll get mine in early! :-) I think you have to account for the fact that not all decisions are made on the basis of purely technical criteria. In some cases there are financial concerns. For example, an existing investment in infrastructure and training. You can't discount the purely emotional criteria used by the decision makers. If a lead engineer knows language X and has little knowledge of language Y, which way is he likely to lean? Or the fear of trying something new which might put your project at risk. And you always have the totally irrational factors of misinformation, rumors and hearsay which can take on qualities of "urban legend" - largely believed, yet without any basis in fact. As for the "Big Players" not wishing to develop their own Ada compilers, ask why they don't want to develop their own compilers for almost any other language at the same time. To start with, these guys are *hardware* manufacturers and software in general is not their "core business". They need to have *some* software developed in house, but increasingly they want the job outsourced if it doesn't somehow create competitive advantage for their product. It used to be that all hardware vendors had their own proprietary operating systems. Now they mostly use some flavor of Unix, Windows NT or maybe a handful of other things. If they have in-house developed compilers, probably most of them have been around for a while and given the choice the hardware vendor would prefer that it be outsourced, except why bother once its already built? The only exception I can think of is Java being a product of Sun. Its easy to figure out what the plot is there. If you get lots of people developing in Java which targets to a "virtual machine" rather than native hardware, you have created the excuse why people need to buy more/faster/bigger hardware, haven't you? Almost by definition, an interpreted pseudo-machine-language is going to have to take more cpu cycles than native machine instructions. It's probably better for the industry if the big hardware vendors contract out for their compiler technology because it unbundles the interests of the compiler vendors & users from the interests of the hardware vendors. As for using Ada (or any other language for that matter) in their own internal development? I'd say it is their loss - they ought to consider it but may not for reasons I stated above. MDC -- Marin David Condic Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600 ***To reply, remove "bogon" from the domain name.*** Visit my web page at: http://www.flipag.net/mcondic