Re: Fantastic Ada promotional piece from Rational (long)

[CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: Fantastic Ada promotional piece from Rational (long)
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



On  Thu, 8 Sep 1994 11:52:53, Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU> wrote:
>
>You just don't get it. Borland _really did_ create that TP juggernaut
>in the universities. I was there, man, and you were not. Borland did
>not give their stuff away; they just saw the futility of trying to
>gouge us; we have the choice to walk away from ripoffs, and we voted
>with our feet.
>
I was there too. As I recall (correct me if I'm wrong) Turbo
Pascal was introduced by Borland at a cost of $29.95 when every
other company on the planet was selling compilers for $500 and
up. The price quickly jumped to $39.95, but was *still* way below
the competition. (I think this was around 1978, but being in the
"springtime of my senility" I'm not sure of the exact time.
Anyway, you can translate this into 1994 dollars.)

If you wanted to buy a programming language (*any* language!)
just to be able to program your machine in something other than
interpreted Basic, at the time, Borland was the very best deal
you could get.

Turbo Pascal was enormously successful because the average
student or hobbyist or interested professional programmer could
run out and buy a copy with spare change, rather than a mortgage
loan. They could play around with it to see if they liked the language
enough to do anything real with it. It didn't matter if the
compiler was entirely bug free or highly efficient - they had a
real programming language they could experiment with for very
little money.

Now if we could find a way to get a full implementation of Ada 9x
out into as many hands as Turbo Pascal ended up in, don't you
think this would start generating a strong commercial market for
Ada products? If it was possible to buy an Ada 9x compiler that
a) did not core dump, b) did not take a rocket scientist to
install or invoke, c) implemented the whole language at a
reasonable level of efficiency and reliability, d) came with
training materials significantly easier to use than an LRM
(emphasizing a Pascal-like subset, just to get folks started) and
e) cost under $200 for the "basic kit", you'd have something
marketable. From there, you sell the add-ons and support for more
$$$ to the guys who want a full-up development environment.

Of course, this was tried by R&R Software years ago and it didn't
quite work. My problem with their $99 compiler was that it
implemented a "non-standard" subset of the language (which kept
you from developing stuff that would be portable - even for
future releases of the compiler and also didn't give you the more
"interesting" features of the language, like generics.) and they
were extremely slow with any upgrades leading to a full
implementation. It was cheap, and wasn't too terribly painful to
install or invoke, and it even more or less generated some
reasonable code - good enough for experiments. But it remaind
"Pascal with nicer syntax" and I don't think enough effort was
put into selling it to the general populace. (I saw adds in
specialized journals, but never saw anything in Byte, nor was it
on the shelf at the local software store.)

Ada *could* go out in the marketplace and successfully compete
because it is an inherently good product. I think it's got some
bad press to overcome, but with a "try it - you'll like it"
approach, I think it can attract interest from even the most
die-hard C/C++ programmers.

The problem is one of price and availability. What's the cheapest
price you know of for a full Ada 83 compiler that works at some
comparable level of performance to most C/C++ compilers for an
IBM-PClone or Mac? What's the difference in price between this
Ada compiler and what you would pay for a C/C++ compiler? Can you
go to the local CompUSA and find it in a shrink-wrap box and take
it home with you?

Answer these questions and it will become immediately obvious to
even the most casual observer why there are more C/C++
programmers out there than there are Ada programmers.

Pax Vobiscum,

Marin


Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   4033121@MCIMAIL.COM
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