Re: Ada, the best language with the not-so-best tool chain

[mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com]

On Thursday, October 18, 2012 3:33:58 PM UTC-7, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> You're not trying too hard if you "can't fathom" why this makes no sense. 
> 
> There's no money to be made, and as with everything, it comes down to money. 
> 
> As I noted, such development systems are typically free. Simple math shows 
> 
> the problem: $0*<enormous number> = $0. I'm pretty sure that AdaCore's many 
> 
> employees don't work for free, so there has to be a higher revenue 
> 
> projection than this in order to make a project viable. If people were 
> 
> actually willing to pay for such systems, it might be worth taking a chance 
> 
> (because $49*<enormous number> does work; that was Borland's model back in 
> 
> the day) -- but in today's software climate, no way.

In the first place, *I* never said it must be free.  In fact, I said that I would personally be willing to pay up to $1000 for Ada on bare-metal ARM (meaning of course I'd have to fill in the HW-specific bits).  That's quite a bit more than $49.

So how did the LEGO Mindstorms port happen?  I doubt (but I could be wrong) that LEGO paid for it.

So again I say I cannot fathom why a potential market of over 6 billion devices (2010 figures) is ignored.  You say nobody is interested in bare metal ports, but I suspect that is only because at AdaCore pricing levels, nobody thinks of using it on low-cost, moderate volume hardware.  I suspect, that is, that it is a chicken-and-egg issue.

Is it not the case, BTW, that AdaMagic can do full Ada 95 on just about any hardware without any OS support?  

Nobody is asking AdaCore folks to work for free.  I'm just amazed that they don't see opportunity out there in the 99.9% of the market that they do not now target.