Re: Ada used in General Aviation (GA) applications?

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

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
 >
 > I believe you are wrong here. In the area we are working, each large
 > vendor of an embedded application is surrounded by a swarm of smaller
 >  firms to which it outsource software development and testing. Each
 > satellite firm has the complete development tool chain. These tools
 > are very expensive. It is a very lucrative market. [Some tool chain
 > vendors just take GCC, build loader, add a pair windows and sell that
 >  for many k$.]
 >
It tends to not work that way here. Embedded systems software is seldom
farmed out to subcontractors. I'd agree that there is some market for
compilers here, and it isn't as grim as I characterized it. But
basically you find hyundreds of companies out there selling some little
embedded board or chip set and they have a development kit with a C
compiler & all the goodies sitting right there and they're practically
giving it away in order to sell boards. How is some alternative vendor
going to come in there with an Ada compiler and convince the developer
he needs to use theirs (without all the supporting goodies) and it will 
only cost him $20,000 a year in annual support contracts?

It won't fly unless the compiler is right there with the rest of the
development kit and doesn't cost a fortune to get.



 >
 > No. It would take too long. I am afraid that Ada is missing the
 > embedded programming market which in the foreseeable future will
 > become no less important than the conventional one.
 >
It wouldn't take too long if Ada focused in on a branch of software
systems to which its existing strengths play and whos practitioners are 
not already Ada-haters. The embedded market already hates Ada with the 
white hot intensity of a thousand suns for a variety of historical 
reasons. In language surveys "Ada" ranks behind "Other" in languages 
used to program embedded systems. I'd *love* to see Ada get some nice 
share of the embedded market, but I think it is lost for the time being 
because it is too expensive in which to play and has too much historic 
resistance to overcome.

If Ada went for something related - like communications or math or 
related fields - and tried to target that audience, they might be more 
receptive. That and they don't demand as much support gagetry just in 
order to be a player. So you can get in there easier and start building 
a market and because it might have a connection to the embedded world, 
it lets you gradually start to try to get into that arena.

MDC



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