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

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:

> Richard Riehle wrote:
>
> > 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 ;-)

I don't know the profile of the executives giving the order.   If I were
to go through my notes, I could find the name of the manager who was
having the success with Ada and giving the seminars.   However, this
is a long dead issue.   It was an example, one of many, that illustrated
the potential for Ada to be successful outside the military environment.
At one time, when people were using for such projects, and then those
projects were mysteriously cancelled, some Ada advocates were
suspecting a conspiracy by Microsoft, Borland, or some other company
with a non-Ada agenda.  Of course, that would never actually happen
since those companies never really felt threatened by Ada.

With the overpriced compilers being supplied by the Ada compiler
publishers, no conspiracy was necessary.

Richard Riehle