Re: Borland Ada

[tannend@source.asset.com (David M. Tannen)]

In article <3iibtm$hlf@source.asset.com>,
Michael M. Bishop <bishopm@source.asset.com> wrote:
>In article <60.18011.4393.0N1D0B41@canrem.com>,
>Steve Shadoff <steve.shadoff@canrem.com> wrote:
>>I was hoping that someone here cound tell me the following.
>>1) Is there a Borland Ada compiler
>>2) If not, will there be one soon?
>>3) What price would it be?
>>4) Does it use the OWL meta-windowing objects?
>There is no Borland Ada compiler at this time and I'm not convinced
>that such a thing will exist any time in the near future. I doubt that
>Borland sees any major return on investment for an Ada compiler project
>and at this point, I couldn't argue with them. 
Actually there is no reason to ever think that Borland will build an Ada
compiler.  There current "hot-ticket" is called Delphi which builds upon
their Borland Pascal v7.0 technology.  In fact if you look at the
language features they have added it is a very nice language for doing
Win3.1 etal development on.  Just don't count on portability to other
OSes or pascals.  Besides that the price is right, <$250 gets the
desktop version on CD and their component library (VCL) on source.  (For
more info see comp.lang.pascal).

Although I will use GNAT for any OS/2 development I might do in the
future, I will be using Delphi for my MS-Windows development until an
Ada vendor can match the Delphi toolset and at their price.

Hopefully the Ada/Windows vendors get the point that there are folks who
will use their tools if they priced them at a reasonable amount.  I do a
lot of short term consulting and many of my clients want portable and
maintainable solutions; but they are not willing to pay thousands of
dollars for tools (and neither am I).  One client is willing to live
within the Windows world and has a lot of BP code so Delphi fits the
bill.  But they would like to also goto  OS/2 one day, and right now the
only reasonable solution I can make is C++ (blech).

So Mr. Vendor if you have a solution for Windows and OS/2 that provides
a visual environment (see Delphi) and a database engine (see Delphi) or
a really good set of libraries for a database engine (see TurboPower's
B-Tree Filer) for ~$500 per seat send me a note.



-- 
David Tannen (tannend@source.asset.com)                 TeamAda Member
Christian Acronyms: B.I.B.L.E.=Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth
                    G.R.A.C.E.=God's Redemption At Christ's Expense
                    F.A.I.T.H.=Forsaking all, I trust Him