Re: is Ada dying?

[john.mccabe@emrad.com.nospam (John McCabe)]

On 8 Oct 2001 00:38:15 -0700, Robert*@ <Robert_member@newsguy.com>
wrote:

> 
>From:
> 
>Technical Report
>CMU/SEI-92-TR-29
>ESC-TR-92-029
>Ada Adoption Handbook:
>A Program Manager?s Guide
>Version 2.0
>William E. Hefley
>John T. Foreman
>Charles B. Engle, Jr.
>John B. Goodenough
>October 1992
>
>
>(reproduced here without persmission from CMU, notice this is almost
>10 years old report!)

10 years is a long time in software - a report of this nature cannot
be relied upon now, particularly as it was written long before Ada 95
became available. Something similar listing the number of Ada 95
compilers available would be use. You have to consider for example
that, at the very least, TLD Systems and Meridian never produced an
Ada 95 compiler (despite TLD's affiliation with ACT) and, as far as I
know, neither even are (capable of) marketing an Ada 83 compiler
anymore. Furthermore Tartan (now part of TI) appear to have ceased any
development of their compilers.

So, while this report says that numbers of compilers have risen since
1987 etc, what has happened since 1992? www.adaic.org lists the
following vendors as having certified Ada 95 compilers:

ACT
Aonix
Averstar
Conccurrent Computer Corporation
DDC-I
Green Hills
Irvine Compiler Corporation
OC Systems
Rational
RR Software

For Ada 83 you have all of the above except ACT plus:

Active Engineering Technologies
Aitech Defense Systems
Alenia Aeritalia & Selenia S.p.A (DACS? - ex-DDC-I?)
Convex
Control Data
Cray Research
DESC (formerly ICL)
DEC
EDS-Scicon
Encore
GSE Gesellschaft fur Software Engineering mbH (Meridian)
Green Valley (!)
HP (Apparently now TSP -> Aonix)
IBM (now OC Systems)
Intel
MIPS (now Rational, Green Hills and DDC-I)
Multiprocessor Toolsmiths, Inc
NEC
Proprietary Software Systems
Rockwell International Corporation
SKY Computers, Inc
STN ATLAS Elektronik GmbH
Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG
Silicon Graphics
Software Leverage, Inc.
Stratus Computer Inc
Sun Microsystems
TLD Systems, Ltd
Tartan Inc (incl TI)
U.S. Air Force
Wang Laboratories, Inc

(Sorry - didn't expect the list to be so long!!!)

So the question that needs to be asked is whether you really want to
promote Ada 83, as there is such a long list of compilers for it
(despite the fact I would be surprised if you could source many of
them anymore), or promote Ada 95 which has clearly seen far less
commercial investment in supporting products.

John