Re: Why don't large companies use Ada?

In article <bjz.153.00154405_at_innsol.com>, Brian J. Zimbelman <bjz_at_innsol.com> wrote:
>In article <Cz9H4I.5HK_at_ois.com> beckwb_at_ois.com (R. William Beckwith) writes:
>
>[much discussion of ADA, why it is/isn't great deleted]
>
>I think one major reason has been omitted from the discussion. A major factor
>in what language I develop in is what language the company/department already
>has invested in.

<Am I the only person that thinks the newsgroup list is excessively cross-posted?>

By itself, this is a compelling argument regardless of whether it's Fortran, Assembler, C++, or any other language. This argument is the "Appeal to Momentum". It's a cool argument for something other than Ada 9X, but with the ability of Ada to interface to C/Fortran/Cobol (and with SGI's cool demonstration of inheriting from C++ classes), this becomes a less significant issue. I claim the argument is less compelling when considering Ada (but certainly not enough to make a manager change their mind...yet).

>Ada developers are rare. C/C++ developers are all over the
>place.

I disagree here. For two reasons: 1) Ada developers aren't "rare", just less visible. Unfortunately, I know LOTS of ex-Ada people stuck in C++ jobs that would jump to Ada again if they could. 2) It's "C" developers that are "all over the place". There is, from my personal observation, a dearth of C++ developers. Many companies are hiring C programmers now and training them in C++. I agree with Bill Beckwith here -- it takes less time to create a productive Ada developer than it does to create a productive C++ developer, even if they only have a C background.

>Therefore, most of the time, my customers want the product in C or
>C++. The price of software is not how much it costs to develop it, but how
>much it costs to maintain it. If I can't find a developer who knows the
>language it was developed in, then I chose the wrong language no matter how
>cheap the initial development was. Oh, and personally I'd choose smalltalk
>over all other languages if it was up to me, but the guy with the check in his
>hands chooses, and that ain't me!
>

Boy, I"m confused. YOu mean to tell me that it's LESS expensive to use a langauge that has been empirically proven to be less reliable, because it's cheaper to find/train a developer in that language? Why not get a language that provides more maintainable code, thus requiring less people (which is the REAL cost factor).

-- 
Proud (and vocal) member of Team Ada! (and Team OS/2)        ||This is not your
   	      Ada -- Very Cool.  Doesn't Suck.               ||  father's Ada 
For all sorts of interesting Ada tidbits, run the command:   ||________________
"finger dweller_at_starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
   ObNitPick: Spelling Ada as ADA is like spelling C++ as CPLUSPLUS. :-)