Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Thanks for getting the thread out of politics and back onto the newsgroup
topic.

I'd agree that Ada's lack of followers isn't really related to some sort of
Left Wing reluctance to touch anything that might be associated with the
military. Its more that there is a general perception that things designed
for the military won't be suitable for commercial use and that corresponding
commercial technology will be cheaper. Look at the Mil-Std-1553 bus. Its a
good, reliable means of blipping bits up and down a wire and many companies
that make avionics for both the military & commercial sector will use the
1553 for the military side of the shop, but never consider it for the
commercial side.

Why? Probably mostly price. 1553 cards are still quite expensive when
compared to something else like an Ethernet card, which is far more complex
in what it has to do. Probably it starts with vendors figuring they can milk
the government cash-cow and thus making little effort to reduce costs.
(Government accounting policies help this along too.) Hence some similar
technology goes to the private sector and competition + volume starts
driving the cost down. Pretty soon, its a self-fulfilling prophecy: Military
equipment costs more than commercial equipment.

Ada certainly messed up on that one too. Especially back in the early days,
the prices were so high that any private citizen who thought he might be
interested in getting involved with Ada would look at the price tag and
immediately be consumed with an urge to deficate. RR Software helped that
picture some, but not before the damage had already been done. There was
also the overall damage done by the poor quality and lack of validation of
the early compilers - leading people to believe that Ada was just another
overpriced, unworkable government boondoggle. Early impressions are really
hard to overcome.

You mention DDC-I and Irvine. Out of curiosity, what sort of price range are
their compilers going for these days and do they target anything
interesting?

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com...
>
> I believe Ada can stand on its own.  The work of ACT, along with
> many others has helped to democratize the language.   However,
> ACT is not the only game in town and others continue to create
> serious compilers for the rigorous demands of real-time, safety-critical
> software.  DDC-I and Irvine Compiler Corporation come to mind
> as examples of these kinds of responsible commercial companies
> who continue to be strong supporters of Ada.  I apologize if I
> have overlooked anyone else, but the fact is that none of those
> companies does much to promote Ada beyond their traditional
> customer base.  Oh, yes, Aonix made an attempt before it
> was purchased by an a bunch of ignoramouses who failed to
> see the value of their Ada capability until too late.