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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!gandalf.srv.welterde.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!franka.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED.rrsoftware.com!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Embeddinator-4000 begetting an Ada-cross-platform future? Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 17:08:58 -0600 Organization: JSA Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <5a8e17dc-1d52-4393-be58-8881e741c3a4@googlegroups.com> <1190543753.541369961.154390.laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org> <6700ecea-cdfe-4c73-88ec-d98bafd9151b@googlegroups.com> <1288175616.541375784.664064.laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org> <2babf92b-161e-4e59-9877-6de5466a6683@googlegroups.com> <95718cf6-c89c-4fb9-bd6a-5abb1146124e@googlegroups.com> <11be6e36-7041-4346-859e-876f0a19ee6b@googlegroups.com> <5b6d496b-a375-41c7-bac6-01a1b20c3137@googlegroups.com> Injection-Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 23:08:59 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: franka.jacob-sparre.dk; posting-host="rrsoftware.com:24.196.82.226"; logging-data="30769"; mail-complaints-to="news@jacob-sparre.dk" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.7246 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:50778 Date: 2018-03-01T17:08:58-06:00 List-Id: "Dan'l Miller" wrote in message news:e067f080-1eb6-4c23-82cf-408cac90a813@googlegroups.com... >Shark8 wrote: >> Turbo Pascal proved that a company could thrive by targeting >> small-businesses >> and hobbyists with relatively cheap compilers. >Well, yes, but back in 1983 the bar was set very low though. Philipe >Kahn's > TurboPascal only needed to be better than Microsoft's BASICA or > GWBASIC .interpreters. (and better than Waterloo BASIC .interpreters. > largely only on fellow-Canadian Commodore) and better than UCSD > p-System Pascal's p-code .virtual machine.. That's not quite true, there were quite a few other options back then, including the $30 JRT Pascal and a variety of Ada subset compilers (including relatively inexpensive versions of Janus/Ada). Janus/Ada surely was a compiler-to-machine-code then (it always was, the interpreted version never left the lab). What TurboPascal did better than anyone else is play the marketing game with a product that was "good enough". JRT for instance was well marketed but was rather limited. We (RRS = Janus/Ada) didn't do a very good job of the marketing game, and even if we had, I have to wonder if the product really was "good enough" (the cheap product probably wasn't, and the expensive one was too expensive -- we eventually got that right, but I think that was after the advent of TurboPascal). In any case, the situation today is wildly different. As Dan'l said, many of the users bought Turbo Pascal because it was "good enough" and cheap. But today, one can get various compilers that are "good enough" and *free*. There is no real market for a $99 compiler today because someone can get something just as good for free -- why spend the money? (And the support for a $99 compiler necessarily has to be limited, meaning that it can't be much better than what you can get with a newsgroup like this one.) The existence of GNAT effectively put RR Software out of business; a large part of our revenue came from being the lowest-cost Ada option, but of course one cannot compete with free. And we never had enough high-end business to survive on that alone. (That probably happened in part by trying to be the lowest-cost option, which caused reputational issues.) I doubt that anyone could recapture the environment of the 1980s for any programming language -- a free option would appear way too quickly to pay back your investment. Randy.