Re: Study shows Ada tools ten times more costly

[emery@mitre-bedford.arpa (David Emery)]

Does Capers Jones define what he means by "function point"?  

Another relevant point is the effect of 'group tools'.  It's very
easy to equip a PC for individual work.  It's a lot harder (but less
hard than it used to be) to equip a collection of PC's for a group
project.  

A third point that I'd like to make here on the specific topic of DoD
tools is the significant cost of embedded system tools, such as
cross-compilers, In-Circuit Emulators, etc.  These tools are very
expensive even for commercial applications, and the additional
requirements for DoD software doesn't help the price any.  

It would be very interesting to see a collection of cost curves
showing 'capitalization' costs for PC-based, workstation-based,
mainframe-based, embedded targets, for single-programmer to large
(>100 programmer) projects, and from low-reliability (games?) to very
high reliability (e.g. avionics) applications.

					dave