Re: An Ada Advice Inquiry

[Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com>]

Markus E Leypold wrote:

> Last time I checked they were to expensive to develop an embedded
> appliance with them (in small quantities) and then keep the compiler
> around for 10 years for maintainance (which every sane customer will
> reuqire). AFAIR they still have that minimum 5 seat clause (a bit much
> for the 9 years of maintainance).
> 
> 
> Regards -- Markus
> 
> 

While I agree it is nice to keep maintenance around for that time, this 
is probably another example of the different bar people set when they 
use Ada.

The US Gov't had/has this thing called JTA (Joint Technical 
Architecture) that lists a bunch of standards you sort of have to use.

If you pick Ada, it had to be a certified compiler. If you pick C, it 
(basically) had to be the case that there were some {} in your code 
because that proved you were  using C.

In this case, we will tell people they should/must pay for 9 years of 
maintenance, which will be too expensive. So, the person will go off, 
select (as a contrived example) visual studio 6, not consider 
maintenance and end up with a product which will not be supported 2 
years out.

The whole maintenance thing is largely a sham. I've dealt with a lot of 
compiler (multi language) and OS vendors over the years. Sure in plenty 
of cases I've had bugs that they have solved...But in just about as many 
cases, I've either needed to find a workaround or use either the full 
source code or source code snippets to fix their problems for them and 
then send it back to them so it can appear in a future version.

Just about the worst thing you can do if you really care about long term 
support is pick any tool that requires some automated method for license 
enforcement (dongle, flexlm, etc). 10 years out, you can pretty much bet 
that even if the vendor wanted to support you, they would no longer know 
how and you can end up with a dead tool.

If I were spending money and micromanaging a development contractor, I'd 
be a lot more interested in making sure they pick a tool suite that will 
not fail 100% when the license server dies. Compiler bugs that pop up 
after 5 years of service almost certainly can be worked around...Node 
locked license servers..maybe not.