Re: [ANN]- AonixADT for Eclipse now available for Intel/Linux and Sparc/Solaris for GNAT

["Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>]

Tom Grosman wrote:
> [Marc], if you can show us a valid business model where we invest
> development resources to provide a free Eclipse interface for a
> competitor's product, we're willing to consider other approaches. We
> think that the limitation on project size means that the ADT is useful
> for smaller projects and especially in acedemic settings, without the
> Add-on.

Perhaps not a "business model", but instead a "business _opportunity_
model".

All Ada software I've developed outside of my day job has been possible
due to AdaCore's compilation tools, and the generosity of numerous other
software developers in the Ada community. I've never used an Aonix
product, but not because I have anything against the company (quite the
contrary, I've been aware of, and appreciated, Aonix' Ada advocacy over
the years).

I'm a serious, self-motivated Ada developer, as are many others in this
forum, so any tool or product that I use has to be capable of performing
effectively and efficiently in my development environment.

AonixADT for GNAT is too capability-limited for my activities, therefore I
won't spend time giving a serious look to a tool that I can't properly
evaluate in my real-world environment. So Aonix loses an opportunity to
gain some mindshare and some hand's-on experience with me.

And without that mindshare and experience, there's no basis for me to
recommend the product to others, including my day job employers. Fair or
not, individuals tasked with recommending tools can't help but be biased
towards those they're already familiar with.

At a former employer that was transitioning from a defunct Ada 83 compiler
to Ada 95, it was my responsibility to make the technical case for the
compiler choice--and clearly my 5 years of experience at that time with
GNAT influenced my analysis. More recently, my experience with the free
distribution of the Perforce Source Control tool (www.perforce.com) to
small development organizations led me to recommending Perforce (over CVS
and ClearCASE, which I also had significant experience with) to an
employer that was upgrading from an ancient version of SourceSafe.

Hand's on exposure to fully capable tools, or those that are limited in a
non-intrusive way (e.g., the free Perforce is limited to two users--not
much of an impediment to a One Map Shop :-) gain mindshare for the product
and the company. While _I_ may find it infeasible to drop $5000 for an
Aonix Ada compiler on Linux, that's not to say I won't give it a fair
hearing to an employer based on what I've learned about the company's
products, quality, and service gained by the use of their other
products--such as AonixADT.

-- Marc A. Criley
-- McKae Technologies
-- www.mckae.com
-- DTraq - Avatox - XIA - XML EZ Out