Re: Ada -- a popular language?

[Bill Keen <billy@marnhull.demon.co.uk>]

In article <01bc479c$dc234320$22f482c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>, Nick
Roberts <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> writes
>The true reason why Ada is not a very popularly used programming language
>has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of the language, nor with the
>preferences of programmers. It is almost entirely to do with the decisions
>taken at a high level by managers whose decisions have little to do with
>technicalities 

The slow takeoff of Ada also has to do with the cost of compilers. In
the late eigthies we used to buy Ada cross compilers for many times the
cost of the PCs we ran them on, and these were high spec PCs for those
day. And the cost of compilers is dictated by mandatory validation.
Apart from hiring a team of hotshots to write the compiler, and paying
for the initial validation, the compiler vendors have to retain them to
revalidate each time the ACVC is reissued. In the eighties this was an
annual event, though it relaxed after 1991 (I think) to every 18 month.
(I don't know the frequency of ACVC 2.x updates for Ada 95.) But the
competition has no such handicap. 

If they'd given away free Ada compilers with every Unix box sold things
might have developed on different lines. These days we can use GNAT for
free, but not for commercial work. Customers tend to demand a validation
certificate, and validated compilers still tend to cost a lot more than
the competition. 

-- 
Bill Keen