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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,677963b1aa23e668 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!e8g2000vbz.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project? Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 03:36:13 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.98.68.197 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1299670573 9364 127.0.0.1 (9 Mar 2011 11:36:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 11:36:13 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: e8g2000vbz.googlegroups.com; posting-host=153.98.68.197; posting-account=pcLQNgkAAAD9TrXkhkIgiY6-MDtJjIlC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009012111 Red Hat/3.0.6-1.el5 Firefox/3.0.6,gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:18958 Date: 2011-03-09T03:36:13-08:00 List-Id: 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 awa= y > in todays economic climate. Why should we pay big money for Ada when we c= an > 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 A= da > 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 goin= g > to remain a niche language because only where quality is important (plane= s > 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 L=F8cke). [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Installing -- Ludovic Brenta.