Re: Cost of Ada support

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

It would also be important to consider the cost of support for similar
technology at a similar level. What is the cost of a garden variety C++
compiler for the same level of support? You could get MSVC++ at a price and
get quarterly updates for a price & probably not be able to get telephone
support at any price - or at least not a reasonable price. Is someone else
out there providing a similar level of support for a C++ compiler that ACT
does for GNAT? I'd bet the price is competitive. What does Cygnus charge for
gcc support and what do you get for that?

And then you also have to ask just how much support do you really need for a
smaller project? My experience with GNAT as a hobbyist and sometime internal
developer of small production systems is that for the most part I don't
really need a lot of hand holding or bug fixes. GNAT is pretty stable
technology for the most part. Its also well documented. And when in doubt,
there's usually free help to be had here on C.L.A. and other places. If I
encounter a bug, I can generally program around it and move on. In this
sense, I'm no worse off than if I were using MSVC++ at considerably more
cost than the "nothing" I pay for downloading GNAT.

I agree that it would be nice to get some level of support between "None"
and "Everything". It might be worth a few bucks to people to subscribe to
some kind of quarterly update service and get nothing else beyond that, but
with the basic stability of GNAT and the non-critical nature of most
projects, I've got to wonder if "Support" is that big an issue.

It might be fair to argue that some given Ada compiler doesn't have as many
critical tools and libraries as does some given C/C++/Java/(insert language
here) compiler and that this is important to project success. I just don't
see much of a case that can be made for bypassing Ada because a high level
of support from one particular vendor costs a lot of money. There are other
vendors - what are they offering for support and how much does it cost?

MDC

--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Mark Johnson" <mark_h_johnson@raytheon.com> wrote in message
news:3CA0FEDF.BF6F2C55@raytheon.com...
> Agreed. That is part of the pricing they chose to implement. They
> explained the reasoning to me - perhaps you can ask to get the same
> answer.... If you need the support and its worth say 8 weeks of labor to
> pay for it, go ahead and do so. If not, ask questions on c.l.a or go to
> another vendor.
>