From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,4509214aa8b1885b
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: GNAT Support Costs
Date: 2000/02/10
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002101322400.4231-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 584271249
References: <m3emba58yr.fsf@laptop.demon.co.uk>
 <86ikmn$o9o$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> <uiu0fl5r6.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov>
 <86ssls$aim$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk>
 <867lgtm6gz.fsf@ppp-162-235.villette.club-internet.fr>
 <8718j0$k6t$1@rk-comp.demon.co.uk>
 <86k8kqowac.fsf@ppp-108-200.villette.club-internet.fr>
 <87i3p2$ih4$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <38A2DE89.BB2A8C5D@gmx.de>
 <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002100831050.5377-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>
 <38A320AD.790389FE@gmx.de>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 950218185 205 bpr@206.184.139.136
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-02-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Andreas Winckler 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.

I think people use these older languages to develop new products too. 

> > 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?

That depends on the project of course. I use unsupported software for 
internal projects all the time (Perl, Tcl, gcc, OCaml, ...). 

If I were working on a project which used GNAT and the cost of failure was
high I'd probably buy support from ACT. What kind of cost are we talking
about here? Tens of thousands of dollars per year? That's peanuts IMO.

> 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?

I've found ACT support very good even for the public version of GNAT. 

What would help Ada a lot more IMO is a hoard of hackers pounding out
useful Ada code. 

-- Brian