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From: Jean-Marc Bourguet <bourguet@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: GNAT Support Costs
Date: 2000/02/11
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In article <38A320AD.790389FE@gmx.de>,
  Andreas Winckler <andreas.winckler@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Brian Rogoff wrote:
> > No language ever dies. There are even people today who use SNOBOL.
>
> Yes, old systems still need maintanence and Ada-Systems will need that
> quite long for sure. But all the young college students will jump on
> Java, C++ or whatsoever because this is where the new challenges are.
>
> > GNAT provides a zero cost hobbyist solution.
>
> Which is of course a great thing!
>
> > What is missing for small projects that you can't get from another
> > company or the open source world?
>
> Is GNAT without support a alternative for small (commercial!)
> projects?

I know of at least one million lines applications (I do not know if
you call this small or big) developped with gcc without support
(as a matter of fact, they kept gcc 2.7.x for a long time because of
the upgrading cost; by the way upgrading a compiler is not something
done lightly in all compagnies I've worked for). Why would it not be
possible for something written in Ada instead of a mix of C and C++?

> The number of companies who offer low cost Ada compilers (validated
> and
> supported!) for the Unix world is quite limited, actually there aren't
> any. The cheapest Ada compiler for Unix that I know is still at least
> 10
> times more expensive than a good C/C++ compiler. Why?

Market size can be a factor (development cost for a compiler is nearly
independant of the number of users); the computer vendor have an
interest to have a cheap C and C++ compilers available (and most
computer vendor are also compiler vendor so this increase pressure to
other vendor), validation also has a cost.

This is without speaking about the quality of support (from my
experience, I've better support from ACT as an unsupported user than
with some compiler vendors from which we have a support contract and not
the cheapest one...).

-- Jean-Marc


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