Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada?

["Dr. Adrian Wrigley" <amtw@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk>]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 09:22:26 -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:

> Rod Chapman made an interesting point. Ada has less than 0.1% of the
> programmer market. BMW has less than 0.1% of the car market. Is BMW a
> failure, or a successful niche player? Ada is a successful niche
> player.

I found this hard to believe.  So I did a quick scan of data to hand.

Latest annual revenues:

GM   : $193 bn
Daimler/Chrysler $184 bn
Toyota : $176 bn
Ford   : $171 bn
VW     : $115 bn
Honda  : $81 bn
Nissan : $75 bn
Fiat   : $60 bn
Volvo  : $29 bn

BMW    : $58 bn

BMW dollar revenue is around 5.1% of the total revenue of the
listed manufacturers.

0.1% /= 5.1%  (off by a factor of fifty :()

If you count units shipped, you'd probably get a better picture,
and I may have missed some significant manufacturers.
US local market data would look less favourable to BMW though.

Of course in terms of programming languages, number of
programmers, number of programs or value of programs are
all plausible measures.  The value measure, I believe
shows Ada in the best light(?)

With the car market, the largest is only 17%.  I think the
mythical "C/C++" language commands a lot more than that.
-- 
Adrian