Re: "No" Ada jobs in the Boston area

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Dave Emery says:

"I think that the Ada compiler industry has been guilty of trying to
recoup profits too quickly, and thereby charging too much for its
entry-level products.

Hmm! there are a lot of investors in Ada companies who sure don't see it
that way, since they lost their shirts. Maybe the vendors were trying to
recoup their profits too quickly, but they sure did not succeed!

The accusation would be more credible if there were examples of Ada
vendors making big profits!

Now one may disagree with the pricing levels, that's a different discussion
based on the perception of the elasticity of the market. If it is really
the case that charging $200 instead of $2000 would have multiplied Ada
users by a factor of 20, then of course the pricing was set wrong. But
that's an argument we have gone through many times before. If the market
really is that elastic, then the availability of GNAT should presumably
greatly increase the number of Ada users, which is certainly the hope!