Re: verdix kisses off Ada

[seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman)]

In article <C7BvpG.7sB@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> ajn@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (arthur.j.nor
thrup) writes:
>It seems that Ada vendors MUST reply in order to set the record straight but
>what if there is no reason to straighten the record in the first place?  The
>little bit of the article provided doesn't indicate that Verdix is abandoning
>Ada.  So long as they don't compromise their Ada activities, I believe that it
>is in the best interest of Verdix and other Ada related companies to become
>multifaceted less they be out of business if the Ada market does evaporate.
>
At the risk of offending vendors or being unduly confrontational, I contribute
my $0.02 to this discussion. The Ada vendors have been saying, consistently,
that they are small companies with scarce resources for e.g. 

- marketing Ada to the non-mandated world, by going to non-Ada shows,
  advertising, etc.;

- supporting schools, in a friendly manner, in getting started teaching Ada, 
  without nickel-and-diming them for "support" those schools don't use;

- testing the elasticity in the Ada market by lowering compiler and tool
  prices to meet the _real_ competition outside the mandate, namely the
  other languages;

There is more but you get the idea. These are not mere extrapolations from
out-of-context quotations, they are paraphrased quotes from principals of
nearly every Ada compiler and tool house. I make a practice of avoiding
flaming individual companies or individuals; in this case my points above
apply to them all anyway.

Miraculously an Ada company finds the resources to develop a C++ compiler.
I said in a previous post that Verdix was "glomming" onto others' C compilers
which they used to write their _Ada_ compilers. I still believe that to be
true. Presumably they are bootstrapping their own C/C++ compilers by
glomming onto the other ones as well (nothing wrong here, it's a time-
honored bootstrapping process).

Now if Verdix were using their _Ada_ compiler to develop their C++ compiler,
that would really be a man-bites-dog story!

-----

A dollar can only be spent once. If the resources aren't there to build bigger
Ada markets, how are they available to build C/C++ compilers? 

Verdix is only today's example. Ask the major vendors; look at their
literature. Instead of scrounging resources to build Ada markets beyond
the mandate, they are scrounging resources to meet the C++ challenge by
building C++ compilers and tools.

What Verdix' response said was that somehow they are finding resources to
diversify, but not to build the Ada marketplace, to make the pie bigger
so that Verdix' and everyone else's pieces are enlarged.

Since a dollar can be spent only once, are Verdix' C++ dollars new ones?
If not, then pray tell how investing in C++ is not a de-investment in
Ada. Straighten me out on this; I have no MBA with which to figure 
it out myself.

If indeed the dollars are new ones, then Verdix might have been able to 
convince those sources that _Ada_ was worth investing in. I assume they
tried. Did they get back a message that Ada was _not_ worth investing in?

'Scuse me for putting this stuff in my own brand of plain English, but
I'm truly baffled.

Mike Feldman