Was... Air Force shows... Now... Vendor Bashing

[cde@ics.com (Chris Eveleigh)]

In article <85B31DC7912@annwfn.com>, merlin@annwfn.com (Fred McCall) writes:
|> Well, having worked with a number of tools (and currently working with
|> what are probably top-end Ada tools -- at least they cost enough), I
|> have to agree in part with the 'vendor bashers'.  I've found the quality
|> of tools to be lower than comparable ones for other languages, as well
|> as being more expensive.  Compiler messages are cryptic (I expect a lot
|> more informative messages -- if the language is going to be that picky
|> and try to force safe practices, the compilers ought to know a lot more
|> than mine is telling me when an error is found).  Development tools are
|> buggy and/or difficult to use.  *EVERYTHING* requires more in the way of
|> resources (including money).  I consider all of this as fall-out from
|> having a captive audience.  
|> 
   ...Stuff deleted...
|> --
|> "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
|>  in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
|> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|> merlin@annwfn.com -- I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

My two bits...

I personally have too little experience to speak for or comment on the quality 
and ease of use the various tools available for Ada on the whole, but I can speak 
about our tool, BX/Ada.  BX/Ada is a tool designed for the rapid application 
development (RAD) of Motif user interfaces. It generates Ada code targetted to 
the Ada/Motif bindings.  While I won't claim the tool is bug free, I will say 
that it is not "buggy".  It is also *very* easy to use.

I don't mean for this to be a product pitch, I mean it just to cite a case
in point (no pun intended) to say that the quality and ease of use of BX/Ada is 
identical to the quality and ease of use of Builder Xcessory (which generates 
C and C++). My personal opinion, having seen and played with a lot of different 
Motif RAD tools, is that BX/Ada is one of the best tools available for quickly 
and easily developing quality Motif GUI's whether in Ada, C or C++ and that there 
are no trade-off's involved in "settling" for a substandard tool just because 
it's in an Ada environment.  (Does it cost more?  Yes, but that is due to the 
necessity of having to have Ada bindings to the Motif toolkit, and the additional 
cost is not exorbitant given that, IMHO.)

I've read a lot of the AJPO literature, and Ada has been selected for use on
many different projects, not just in the DoD.  I simply can't believe that 
there aren't excellent tools available for use on these projects.

Going back to what dewar@cs.nyu.edu Robert Dewar wrote:

|> ...there are good Ada tools and bad Ada tools...

To coin a phrase:

If the tool is good, tell a friend; if the tool is bad, tell the vendor.
Hmm, I guess the converse is true, too.  :-)

--Chris Eveleigh, BX/Ada Product Manager