Re: How many different processors do you use?

[pitchl@tdbank.ca (Lew Pitcher)]

Could not the "Defense Contractor" billing mindset also figure into this?
Since Ada was/is the required language for DOD work, it might suffer from
the same inflationary pricing that introduced multi-hundred dollar toilet seats
to the DOD.

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:14:29 GMT, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:

>In article <ouf0k7.oe.ln@bigbird.sw.asiainfo.com>,
>  markh@usai.asiainfo.com wrote:
>> So, a vendor which was charging $2000 per seat (list
>> price) for a C compiler was at the same time charging
>> $10,000 per seat for the equivalent Ada system.
>> You could argue that the Ada system did 5 times more
>> than the C system, but the impression I got was that
>> they charged more simply because they felt they could,
>> and that other vendors would pay since they would
>> consider it as a necessary cost of doing business
>> with the government.
>
>Much more likely was that the market for C was much greater
>than the market for Ada. That clearly gets reflected in the
>price. There are often also considerably different levels of
>support involved.
>
>Think about televisions, I can buy a very nice 25" television
>for $250 these days, but if I want a monitor of similar size
>for a computer, they cost a lot more. Better quality? Well
>that's part of it, but mostly there are far more 25" television
>sets in the world than large screen computer monitors.
>
>In the case of software the manufacturing cost is very low,
>so everything comes down to volume and support requirements.
>
>There is also the general issue of trying to guess the
>elasticity of the market. Some Ada vendors tried the low cost
>product approach, but in Ada 83 days at least, this was not
>very successful.
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Share what you know. Learn what you don't.


Lew Pitcher
System Consultant, Integration Solutions Architecture
Toronto Dominion Bank

(pitchl@tdbank.ca)


(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's.)