Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Richard Riehle wrote:
> "John R. Strohm" wrote:
>>Just out of curiosity, did the Xerox executives in question give any kind of
>>explanation WHY they outlawed Ada?
> 
> As nearly as anyone could determine, they had no reason other than that they
> decided to standardize on C.
> 
>>One would think that, if the project manager did a decent job of detailing
>>the actual cost and schedule savings on the Ada project, that it would get
>>the attention of the beancounters.
> 
> The project manager was giving a lot of success story seminars at conferences,
> especially Tri-Ada conferences.    However, his was the only development
> group that had enjoyed success with Ada.   Everyone else was using other
> languages, including, if I recall correctly, Mesa.
> 
> It looks, from the outside, like another example of the kind of stupidity about
> computing once typical of  people at the executive level of Xerox.  It is hard
> to know if they have gotten any better.   They certainly never learned any
> lessons from PARC -- although the rest of the world did.
> 
> Richard Riehle

Out of "idle curiosity", were these "excutives" former "developers"?
I can picture X-programmers turned executives from having their own
mis-informed biases, or biases that should be re-checked with new
information. My own personal experience is that those that have had
prior "experience" (or think they've had) are the most difficult ones
to deal with ;-)

wwg.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg