Re: Ada platforms and pricing, was: Re: a new language, designed for safety !

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Simon Clubley" <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote in 
message news:lnn8ff$k42$1@dont-email.me...
> On 2014-06-16, Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
>> "Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> wrote in message
>> news:2100734262424129975.133931laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org...
>>> "J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote:
>> ...
>>> language. Would you argue
>>>> that C is being impaired because Microsoft C is not free?
>>>
>>> There are many implementations of C, not true of Ada.
>>
>> Really? I'm sure the Atego people, ICC (Adam's employer), and RRS (me) 
>> would
>> be rather surprised to hear that. Not to mention the many Ada 95
>> implementations still available.
>
> How many of those compilers can be used to generate code for an ARM
> or MIPS processor and how does the pricing compare to the comparable
> C compiler ?

Not relevant to the original point, which is that there are pay compilers 
and free compilers for both Ada and C. And there are many of each for both 
languages. You said nothing about targets in your original statement, nor 
the message you were replying to (which was about Microsoft C).

...
> Many of those people wanting to explore the language will be wanting
> to explore Ada by using it on embedded platforms so you need a range
> of Ada cross compilers available in the same way you have a range of
> C cross compilers available for those same people to use.

It's impractical to have any such cross-compilers. Every such compiler 
(run-time, really) has to be tailored to the specific board in question. We 
treated each embedded compiler as something that would require extensive 
support, and I still think we lost money on each.

The only reason that C compilers exist is because the board manufacturer 
spent $$$$ to create/tailor it.

Obviously, a dedicated person can do that work for themselves, but you 
already have to be an expert to do so.

> ... However, many of the people you are potentially trying
> to get interested in using Ada in the future workplace are generally
> hobbyists and other people paying for their experiments out of their
> own pockets - and those people have several free non-Ada options
> available to them for their projects.

And there is no possible way for Ada to compete with this. It takes $$$$ (or 
equivalent time) to create *one* cross-compiler for *one* board. Without 
someone providing that $$$$ or time, no equivalent is possible.

Personally, I'm dubious that there are enough hardware hackers out there for 
the existence of free Ada cross-compilers to matter. I found hardware 
near-impossible to understand, and as such, it's clearly beyond the 
possibility for 99.9% of hobbyists as well. :-) The existence of things like 
the Raspberry PI helps a bit, but there were boards like that back in the 
80s (I forget the name of the one that we had) but it still was way too 
difficult to make it do something. I decided that getting an S-100 A-to-D 
card was a better, if more expensive, plan (because it could then be 
programmed sensibly).

                                        Randy.

P.S. Of course, I'm the same guy who has never managed to write a fully 
working program in C. I refuse to believe that anyone can do so (and most of 
the evidence is that I'm right :-).