Re: Why do so many companies use Apex?

["Corey Ashford" <x@y.com>]

One of the reasons that Apex appears to be slower than other
compilers is that it is actually doing more work for you, to
save you time down the road.  Apex retains persistent compilation
information about units that it can use later to determine which
units exactly needs to be recompiled when a change is made to
any one of them.  As a simple example, in other compilers, changing
a  comment in oft-with'd spec will cause massive recompilation.
In Apex, the compiler will realize that there are no differences
in the peristent compilation information, and thus no recompilation
needs to take place.  Also, this persistent information is used
to allow you easily navigate your source code to find object and
type definitions.

As for inventing new terminology, Rational decided that the
bare language didn't have enough structure to solve all the
engineering and maintainance problems that users face.  So a new
CM system was created, and to efficiently talk about it, names
were assigned to parts of the system.


Disclaimer: I work for Rational.


Corey Ashford
Rational Software Corp.

"William Dale" <william.dale.jr+adanews@lmco.com> wrote in message news:3ABFB3AD.DF3AA617@lmco.com...
> I concur with your observations.  Rational was once targeting big DoD
> companies but has been pushing its C++ tools out here in Silly Valley
> lately. It seems that mangers spend big bucks on tools because all the
> best tools cost the most ( ha! )   I keep pushing Open Source tools (and
> Gnat) but nobody listens.
>
> The real pity is that many people have only seen Ada on Rational Apex
> and think that this turkey is the real 'Ada'.
>
> Bill
>
> Phaedrus wrote:
> >
> > I've been developing with Ada since the mid 80's, and I don't think
> > that I've ever encountered a development environment as bad as
> > the Apex Ada environment.
> >
>
> [SNIP]
>
>
> > So, why do people keep buying this turkey?  And don't try and give me that,
> > "It's okay
> > once you get used to it" argument, would you like a hot stove if you sat on it
> > long
> > enough?  Granted, with Rational buying out most of the other Ada compiler
> > companies
> > (Can anybody say "antitrust"?  Would somebody PLEASE say it to Rational?  In an
> > official way, if possible.) there aren't many vendors left to buy from, but even
> > old Vax
> > Ada kicks it's butt for development.
> >
> > Phaedrus