Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

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

Well, I write stuff without an RTOS every day and you are right that Ada
provides all you need to do this sort of job. Still, an RTOS can provide you
a lot of things that may make life easier. But of course you may then have
price or license issues on the product you're selling and so on, so you've
got engineering tradeoffs whatever way you go.

Its still a tough sell to management - they do get enamoured by the latest
fads and advertizing glitz. But its my belief that the root problem is that
Ada - while presenting real advantages - does not present a large enough
advantage to persuade people that it is worth the costs and risks to go use
it. If Ada concentrated on building up leverage within a specific domain, it
would be able to present a clear and convincing case that to do it with
anything else is just foolish. But that has to be a significant kind of
leverage.....


MDC
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E259DAD.7B21B061@adaworks.com...
>
> I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
> system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
> They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
> highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
> that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
> such systems before.
>
> Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
> jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
> that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
> decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.
>
> The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
> value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
> such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
> the Ada.
>
> I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
> Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
> and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
> has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
> to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
> been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
> during the Seventies and Eighties.
>
> Richard Riehle
>