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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,630c12e823d1bdf4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-01-10 19:37:11 PST Message-ID: <3E1F9FD5.90802@nospam.adrianhoe.com> Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 12:38:45 +0800 From: Adrian Hoe User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020314 Netscape6/6.2.2 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET) References: <1040653133.613605@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3e18f3f3_1@news.tm.net.my> <6KwmrO7CZtnj@eisner.encompasserve.org> <1041910244.361888@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3E1E5604.5030209@nospam.adrianhoe.com> <3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: akh-131-178.tm.net.my X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: akh-131-178.tm.net.my X-Trace: news.tm.net.my 1042256052 akh-131-178.tm.net.my (11 Jan 2003 11:34:12 +0800) Organization: TMnet Malaysia Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!news1.tm.net.my Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:32903 Date: 2003-01-11T12:38:45+08:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > I'd agree that Ada's lack of followers isn't really related to some sort of > Left Wing reluctance to touch anything that might be associated with the > military. Its more that there is a general perception that things designed > for the military won't be suitable for commercial use and that corresponding > commercial technology will be cheaper. Look at the Mil-Std-1553 bus. Its a > good, reliable means of blipping bits up and down a wire and many companies > that make avionics for both the military & commercial sector will use the > 1553 for the military side of the shop, but never consider it for the > commercial side. > > Why? Probably mostly price. 1553 cards are still quite expensive when > compared to something else like an Ethernet card, which is far more complex > in what it has to do. Probably it starts with vendors figuring they can milk > the government cash-cow and thus making little effort to reduce costs. > (Government accounting policies help this along too.) Hence some similar > technology goes to the private sector and competition + volume starts > driving the cost down. Pretty soon, its a self-fulfilling prophecy: Military > equipment costs more than commercial equipment. > > Ada certainly messed up on that one too. Especially back in the early days, > the prices were so high that any private citizen who thought he might be > interested in getting involved with Ada would look at the price tag and > immediately be consumed with an urge to deficate. RR Software helped that > picture some, but not before the damage had already been done. There was > also the overall damage done by the poor quality and lack of validation of > the early compilers - leading people to believe that Ada was just another > overpriced, unworkable government boondoggle. Early impressions are really > hard to overcome. The lack of Ada books is another reason why Ada is unable to catch on the band wagon. No doubt there are a few very good books on Ada. But the number is simply not enough to catch people's attention. I came in contact with an Ada compiler on Apple CP/M in the early-mid 80's. It was dirt cheap. It cost next to zero simply because I copied it from a computer shop. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Ada books. I could only understand some of the Ada syntax and lexical from its limited examples. There wasn't any Internet in my country then. Lacking of resources, I shut down on Ada. Compare to C/C++, there are tonnes of C/C++ books out there. I have more than 25 C/C++ books in my personal library. But I have only 7 books on Ada. Another cause is the availability of C/C++ compilers/tools. C/C++ has wide support across any platforms which include PDAs. It is easy to develop an application for any PDAs using C/C++. In contrast, one has to go through long haul using Ada to develop a simple application for PDAs. This is why my company is still using C/C++ for developing PDAs' applications and we still struggling to ride on Ada. Other than the technical merits of Ada, it still has a very wide gap to gain more acceptance as a development tools compare to others like C/C++. -- type Dmitry is new Adrian; -- Adrian Hoe -- http://adrianhoe.com -- Remove *nospam* to email