Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

localhost@example.org wrote:
> Somebody else already pointed out the difficulty of finding qualified
> people. Most companies already pay for toolchains so you need a "good"
> argument like how much money will you save today, tomorrow is too far away
> in todays economic climate. Why should we pay big money for Ada when we can
> already get Java for basically nothing and C++ for cheap and we can find
> Java and C++ coders for a pittance and they're worth every penny ;) but Ada
> people are expensive.

I don't think Ada programmers are any more expensive than Java or C++
programmers.  The language does not make a difference in salary; only
their level of experience does.  It is true that Ada programmers tend
to be experienced; either because they learned Ada long ago at
university, or because they are young, bright, self-motivated people
who learned on their own.  They do tend to be the better programmers,
too, IMHO, since they know more than one language.

> Like most things in business its about money and not quality. Ada is going
> to remain a niche language because only where quality is important (planes
> not crashing) or other projects where they get to use other peoples money
> (government contracts) nobody can really afford Ada no matter how good it
> is. And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.

What you say is true in most cases, simply because most people are too
stupid to have a long-term, or even medium-term, vision.  In fact,
most of them have no vision at all; as far as technical decisions are
concerned, they simply follow the herd like lemmings.  But in the
medium term, the lack of quality in software (i.e. bugs, delays,
budget overruns) can cost much more than the savings you can achieve
with Ada.  In this perspective, Ada is a competitive advantage against
lemmings.

Note that you can get a good Ada toolchain at no cost[1].  It is
always possible to get paid or volunteer support for this version of
GNAT, case by case.  I think this is a viable proposition for small
businesses.  The wide availablility of this zero-cost compiler,
combined with GNU/Linux and the Internet, has sparked the recent
renaissance of Ada in the hobbyist space.  It is now starting to
percolate into the SOHO space (witness Thomas Løcke).

[1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Installing

--
Ludovic Brenta.