From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_20 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 22 May 93 16:43:26 GMT From: seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman) Subject: Re: verdix kisses off Ada Message-ID: <1993May22.164326.6960@seas.gwu.edu> List-Id: In article <9575@verdix.verdix.com> brucej@verdix.com (Bruce Jones) writes: >In article <1993May21.162150.20535@seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michae l Feldman) writes: >>A dollar can only be spent once. If the resources aren't there to build bigge r >>Ada markets, how are they available to build C/C++ compilers? > >Mike, its not just a question of dollars, the reason is that the resources >are different. The resources needed to build a C/C++ compiler is a team >of highly skilled compiler engineers. Verdix has such a team. You can't >just go buy these people, you have to build the team slowly over time. Oh, that's certainly true. But each person-hour can be spent only once. Each hour invested in building a C or C++ compiler is one that's _not_ spent developing Ada stuff whose performance and reliability is such that people who are spending their own money will buy it. > >I don't know what resources are needed to build a bigger Ada market, but then >I'm just one of the compiler engineers. I am sure that it takes more than >just money. I suspect that GNU Ada and Ada 9x will do more to increase >the size of the Ada market than anything we vendors might do. IMHO that's a copout. I have dealt with all the major Ada vendors for 10 years. Each time it's been suggested to them about how they could improve the perception and reality of Ada in the world outside the mandate, they've come back with lots of ways _someone else_ could do this. There is no doubt that GNAT will improve accessibility to Ada for companies and universities interested in getting started with Ada, without paying the huge prices (relative to other languages) requested by the Ada companies. This lets the Ada companies off the hook: they are pushing the responsibility for Ada's future onto others - in this case, NYU (which is building GNAT) and Uncle Sam (which is funding it). Ask any teacher what a vendor could do to help Ada along. You don't have to wait for Ada9X, or wait for GNAT. We've been telling you for years how you could build the grass-roots support for Ada by starting in the schools, just like the hardware companies do. The vendors - without even trying - have responded with idiocy like per-seat pricing, per-seat support bills, and generally, unfriendly approaches. Asked why, they respond that they'd "go broke supporting schools", as though they didn't know that compilers used for teaching require almost no support. (I have to violate my usual policy of not singling out vendors, because - in my own 10-year experience - Verdix has been by far the worst offender here.) The net has seen my diatribes on this before; I won't bore you again. But if the vendors think there's nothing they can do but move to C++, they are surpassingly myopic. Maybe you and I realize this, but the business types running the companies just don't get it. We predicted years ago - well before the C++ wave started, even - that their insistence on Ada "being a small market" and taking no risk to expand it would guarantee that Ada would remain a small market. We told them so; I can show you chapter and verse where we did. They just don't get it. Our prediction has, sadly, come true. And if you think that Ada9X or GNAT is miraculously going to change things, think again. Without a paradigm shift from the companies, nothing much will change. I'd like to be optimistic, but the growing investment of Ada houses in C++ tells me that I can't be. Where am I reading about Verdix putting its compiler engineers to work building an Ada9X compiler that'll blow the doors off C++? Steve Ziegler's response to the net, for all its warm and fuzzy wording, is still saying that Verdix would prefer investing in C++ to investing in really good Ada stuff that real, commercial, profit-oriented organizations will buy with their own money. Wanna bet that Verdix' C++ compilers will be cheaper than their Ada compilers? Enough. Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School of Engineering and Applied Science The George Washington University Washington, DC 20052 USA (202) 994-5253 (voice) (202) 994-5296 (fax) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet) "The most important thing is to be sincere, and once you've learned how to fake that, you've got it made." -- old show-business adage ------------------------------------------------------------------------