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From: "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com>
Subject: Re: GNAT Support Costs
Date: 2000/02/11
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Date: 2000-02-11T00:00:00+00:00
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Andreas Winckler wrote
>I think I quite understand your business model, it's fine - for you!
>But I still want to do a small, inexpensive project in a small company
>and I want to do it with Ada. I'm just sick of arguing against people
>who claim that C++ or Java is cheaper.


Perhaps you should challenge their understanding of economics. It is people who
cost money.

You can divide ETS (Effort To Solution) into two critical components; money and
time (although everything boils down to money ultimately). Sometimes you can
spend money to lower the time component. If one chooses Ada over C one can
lower the time component. That lowers the total cost.

Perhaps you should try the following on them:
If I get a C compiler for $100 dollars per seat and an Ada compiler for
$10000/year a seat. How much would the C vendor have to pay me so that his
compiler would become cost effective?

Point is that Ada may reduce mthe ETS down to around 30 % of the C ETS. The
cost of a programmers dwarfs the cost of the compiler if he is as productive as
he can with Ada.

For C (probably as C++ and Java) it is customary to forget the phase which
comes just after you have typed in your program. It is the debugging phase. At
least for me, this tends to be noticable even for small programs. It is amazing
how many mistakes I can make in a few lines. When the program works, we
remember the time it took to type it in, but forget the time spent making it
work.

Greetings,