Re: April 1993: Ada9X mortally wounded in non-Mandated press

[news.crd.ge.com!sunroof!hammondr@uunet.uu.net (Richard A Hammond)]

In article <EMERY.93Apr18123355@dr_no.mitre.org> emery@dr_no.mitre.org (David E
mery) writes:
>If all this "marketing stuff" were as easy as Greg implies it is, then
>there is no real reason for his reuse business to be anything less
>than wildly successful.  
>				dave

You're forgetting one thing, Greg has spent only a very small fraction
of the money the DoD has spent on Ada.  As a taxpayer I strongly agree
with Greg, that the money being spent on STARS and some of the other
Ada related projects is mostly a waste of money, given what was and
what could have been accomplished.

I also agree with Greg that the Ada compiler vendor's reasoning smacks of
self fulfilling prophecy.  "There is a small market for Ada so we have to
charge BIG bucks per compiler" which of course ensures that the market
stays small.  This is OK when you have the Ada mandate to fall back on,
you know the market is small, but won't vanish entirely, so you choose
lower volume and much higher prices, knowing you'll get those high
prices at taxpayer's expense.

If Ada wasn't mandated it would be dead now.  And it shouldn't be, it
is a useful language.

Rich Hammond