3 ms·

It really wasn't ridiculous. I know, from the point of view of your budget, it really was, but... The compiler writers were serving a tiny sliver of a market.

by RogerL 12y ago

It really wasn't ridiculous. I know, from the point of view of your budget, it really was, but... The compiler writers were serving a tiny sliver of a market. At the time it took a lot of resources to build such a compiler, and then you had to support a bunch of not-off-the-shelf, militarized and embedded chips. You had to past a huge suite of tests, and if a customer submitted a bug, well, you just had to fix it in a timely manner. I'm sure we paid a ton for our compiler, but they also ended up flying people to us regularly from NYC to DC. The compiler writers were all but on speed dial. I'm sure we got our money's worth out of it. Now, what we could have gotten from the same amount of money applied to a C compiler plus extensive tooling, testing, and so on is an interesting question...

Blackthorn 12y ago
It was ridiculous. These languages are now all dead, because they never gained the mindshare compared with the languages that were free, which eventually led to their decline. That's the point.
- RogerL 12y ago
  I understand the point perfectly. It does not change the economics of the situation for the compiler writers. There is no way a company could have offered an Ada compiler for, say, $100, or even $500.
  - wtracy 12y ago
    Isn't there some way they could have implemented tiered pricing? An $X00 Learning/Evaluation Edition and an $X,000 (or $X0,000) Professional Edition?
    - RogerL 12y ago
      That's a good point. I wasn't in the business of writing the compilers, just using them. At my University we had Ada for free (I studied with Mike Feldman, listed below); I don't know what the licensing was for it to the school. But, you know, this was heavy iron. At work the compiler ran on VAX, compiled to 1750A. Who wants that besides DoD? So,there was probably a x86 back end, I don't know. But still, we were buying extra memory modules and processors for the VAX just to get it to be able to handle the compiler. No way that was going to be running on the boxes of the day (where 'the day' = 1990-4 time frame). Even then, we were "submitting" jobs - you'd start a compile, go to lunch, come back, and maybe, just maybe have an image ready to go. Okay, so let's say they engineer it to somehow require low memory so it'll compile on a PC of the time. Then what? The prevailing opinion was pretty hostile to Ada, even within the DoD community where it was being used. People didn't want Ada, they weren't clamoring for it, the only market for it was for the programs where it was mandated, and programs would often do whatever they could to get exemptions written for them. Maybe it was different in Europe, I don't know. But at the time it was considered to be bloated, 'designed by a committee', with a lot of unnecessary features and limitations. I don't agree with that assessment, and of course there were people with different views on the subject, but it was a pretty hostile marketplace. Most of the positive press for Ada was accompanied with praise for heavy process - waterfall, design first types stuff. That didn't appeal for a good reason, and it is hard, without experience, to recognize that the language did not require working that way. Heck, we did iterative development with it long before XP and Rapid Development were coined. The average consumer just did not want Ada. Are you going to go into a company strategy meeting, suggest giving away your very expensive compiler that won't really work well on the machines of the day, risking your career? It was a different world, we didn't talk about gaining 'mind share' and the like back then. Things like gcc, while available, were openly scoffed at, except by the uber-nerds. I tried to push gcc early on, and just got laughed at. OF COURSE we are going to throw money at Microsoft; that's what responsible businesses do. As I stated above, Feldman was initially my advisor in grad school; he was pushing Ada adoption very hard - you can see where that went. Dismissing all of that history and experience with 'ridiculous' is pretty hostile and condescending, not to mention unthinking (I know you didn't say that). We may be gray beards, but we know a few things too! :) It was a language before its time. I guess it's a 'shame', but there is plenty of room for a free, strongly typed, engineering language. Perhaps Rust is it, perhaps something else is. I don't blame 1980s companies for not operating as if it was 2014.

by RogerL 12y ago

Blackthorn 12y ago

It was ridiculous. These languages are now all dead, because they never gained the mindshare compared with the languages that were free, which eventually led to their decline. That's the point.

RogerL 12y ago
I understand the point perfectly. It does not change the economics of the situation for the compiler writers. There is no way a company could have offered an Ada compiler for, say, $100, or even $500.
- wtracy 12y ago
  Isn't there some way they could have implemented tiered pricing? An $X00 Learning/Evaluation Edition and an $X,000 (or $X0,000) Professional Edition?
  - RogerL 12y ago
    That's a good point. I wasn't in the business of writing the compilers, just using them. At my University we had Ada for free (I studied with Mike Feldman, listed below); I don't know what the licensing was for it to the school. But, you know, this was heavy iron. At work the compiler ran on VAX, compiled to 1750A. Who wants that besides DoD? So,there was probably a x86 back end, I don't know. But still, we were buying extra memory modules and processors for the VAX just to get it to be able to handle the compiler. No way that was going to be running on the boxes of the day (where 'the day' = 1990-4 time frame). Even then, we were "submitting" jobs - you'd start a compile, go to lunch, come back, and maybe, just maybe have an image ready to go. Okay, so let's say they engineer it to somehow require low memory so it'll compile on a PC of the time. Then what? The prevailing opinion was pretty hostile to Ada, even within the DoD community where it was being used. People didn't want Ada, they weren't clamoring for it, the only market for it was for the programs where it was mandated, and programs would often do whatever they could to get exemptions written for them. Maybe it was different in Europe, I don't know. But at the time it was considered to be bloated, 'designed by a committee', with a lot of unnecessary features and limitations. I don't agree with that assessment, and of course there were people with different views on the subject, but it was a pretty hostile marketplace. Most of the positive press for Ada was accompanied with praise for heavy process - waterfall, design first types stuff. That didn't appeal for a good reason, and it is hard, without experience, to recognize that the language did not require working that way. Heck, we did iterative development with it long before XP and Rapid Development were coined. The average consumer just did not want Ada. Are you going to go into a company strategy meeting, suggest giving away your very expensive compiler that won't really work well on the machines of the day, risking your career? It was a different world, we didn't talk about gaining 'mind share' and the like back then. Things like gcc, while available, were openly scoffed at, except by the uber-nerds. I tried to push gcc early on, and just got laughed at. OF COURSE we are going to throw money at Microsoft; that's what responsible businesses do. As I stated above, Feldman was initially my advisor in grad school; he was pushing Ada adoption very hard - you can see where that went. Dismissing all of that history and experience with 'ridiculous' is pretty hostile and condescending, not to mention unthinking (I know you didn't say that). We may be gray beards, but we know a few things too! :) It was a language before its time. I guess it's a 'shame', but there is plenty of room for a free, strongly typed, engineering language. Perhaps Rust is it, perhaps something else is. I don't blame 1980s companies for not operating as if it was 2014.