Re: Ada is not a failure.

[psinntp!vitro.com!news@uunet.uu.net (Morris J. Zwick)]

In article <1993Jul25.065103.19504@hellgate.utah.edu>
matwood%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Atwood) writes:
>
>True, your LEAP program makes a stab at it, but it took an Ada vendor too
>long to realize what nearly every other software vendor knows, the schools
>are what will sell you.  (And don't tell me about "finantial realities".
>Once you have the thing developed, it's next to free to copy and distribute
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This argument is specious. How do you expect to recover the costs of developing
the software if you don't ask a high enough price? The real problem with Ada
prices is the (at least cuurently) small market for selling the compilers.
Economies of scale do not enter the fray, therefore the development costs are
recovered over fewer copies of the product.

Now one could argue that these Ada vendors could "invest" money into developing
their market by offering their products at a lower cost and advertising to
enlarge their market, and thereby lowering their margins. However, remembering
that all of this started out in the DoD marketplace, where vendors are
EXTREMELY risk averse, it comes as no surprise that the vendors are not willing
to bet these up front costs on the language's eventual success.

Which leads to another question: Are language wars won by costs, merit
(including technical superiority), decree, or some combination? Clearly the
fact that C/C++ have become popular does not vouch for pure merit being the
primary success factor. I do not believe anyone has a total grip on why certain
languages are more successful than others; I await an empirical study to find
answers anxiously.

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