Re: advantages or disadvantages of ADA over pascal or modula

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

I'm basically with you here, but keep in mind a couple of things. One is
that from a manager's view of things, "Language A" at a cost of $20 versus
"Language B" at a cost of $20,000 starts looking like a no-brainer.
"Language B" had better have some real hard evidence that it is $19,980
better than "L:anguage A" or the manager is just seeing it as pissing away
his budget needlessly. Hence Ada needs to come in at a price that is
competitive with other languages (often "free" in the microcontroller world
because they throw it in with a development board - O.K., its bundled so not
really "free" but when the development board is $250..$500, you can barely
see any real cost there.)

The other thing being that the prior poster had a valid point about using
HC11/HC12 or 8051 processors. Ada might be the most wonderful thing to come
along since shirt pockets, but can you get Ada for some of these small
microcontrollers? At any price? And if so, does it come with all of the
spiffy development tools one might get by using the manufacturer's supplied
development kit? (And I'd like to avoid the inevitable observations about
getting an Ada compiler to generate C code and then use the manufacturer's
development kit. It tends to be a no-sale since you've got to add layers of
stuff and additional costs on top of what usually amounts to being a small
project anyway. Even if it costs me some productivity and I have to spend
twice as long in testing to insure product reliability, I'm still probably
better off than spending lots of money and valuable time up front cobbling
together the Ada and C compilers with unproven and dubious results.)

I'm a fan of Ada and I'd like to see it used in embedded microcontroller
projects. I think that long term it would be a benefit to such projects, But
until Ada development kits are available at competitive prices and they're
just sitting there on the board manufacturer's development kit, its a really
tough sale to make. Perhaps if someone were to design a nice little
microcontroller board and targeted Gnat to it & provided all the tools
needed, that might be a way to gain some acceptance of Ada in that world. I
just don't see anyone jumping up and down waving their hands and saying "Oh
Please! Let *me* do that job!!!" :-)

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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John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:C2E97C094C00112D.3534546977D61EFF.8CD62D3596DEEE44@lp.airnews.net...
>
> In other words, trying to save a few pennies on software development
> toolsets is sheer idiocy.
>
>