Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

David Starner wrote:
 >
 >
 > My feelings too. 15 years ago, someone made a killing by releasing a
 > Turbo Pascal for under a hundred bucks, and made Pascal a major
 > language.

It was probably more than 15 years ago - Early 1980's?


 > Free software has helped drop the off-the-shelf price of a complete
 > Un*x system with C, C++, Pascal and Lisp compilers to under a hundred
 > bucks. But I still get quoted a price of $700 for an Ada compiler.
 > Maybe that's fine for ye system engineers, but programmers,
 > especially we student programmers, don't have a wealth of money to
 > drop on compilers. Perhaps I need to find a new hammer.

In fairness, something like Gnat has forced the cost of Ada compilers
down too. Gnat is available at no cost and is of reasonable quality for
most work. And there are compilers such as MSVC++ that will come in at a
$700 price tag (or thereabouts - I've not priced it recently) as well.
So Ada is at least in the ballpark.

Where Ada may be weaker than other languages is in the area of what all
surrounds the compiler itself. Things like Java present a more "Total 
Solution" to the potential buyer.

MDC
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Marin David Condic
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