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"Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 5 Apr 1998 10:25:51 -0700
Reply-To:
Nasser Abbasi <[log in to unmask]>
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we_port_anything Inc.
From:
Nasser Abbasi <[log in to unmask]>
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David Fisher wrote:

soory, why do you keep saying "we" and then say:

> For a company with a single very-much-part-time programmer (me),

do you actually work for a company with many programmers, or it it just
you?

>
> For what it may be worth....
>
> My company manufactures industrial machinery for the aircraft and other
> industries, and these machines are virtually all controlled by embedded x86
> computers. To date, we've

you  mean I?

>used MS C to write programs which then ran under
> either MS-DOS or an equivalent single-user OS. While these programs do work
> reasonably well, we

you mean I?

>feel that we

you mean I ?

>could do better. To this end, having long had
> an interest in Ada, we

you mean I?

>looked at Ada 95 and various RTOSes.
>
> We

you mean I?

>have been looking for some time, and the result of this search is a
> continuing dissatisfaction.

I don't understand this. You can download GNAT right now, at this very
minute, for free, with full documentations, but you'd rather user MS VC.
then you complain about support. If you do not want support from ACT,
you do not have to have it. do you think M$ will give you support for
free? Last I looked, it will cost you $100/hr to call M$ for phone
support.

> As we're

you mean I?

>not a very large consumer of RTOS
> licenses, we've

you mean I've ?

>been essentially ignored by manufacturers of OSes >appropriate
> for real-time, multi-threaded programs.

so, you consider DOS a real-time, multi-threaded OS?

>There are several "free" OSes
> available, e.g. Linux and RTEMS, but we

you mean I ?

>need assistance in their implementation,

you need assistance using UNIX? how about buying a book on UNIX?

> and the available resources make these choices anything but
> free.

if you can't afford a $30 book, go to the library, if you can't afford a
library card, check the internet, there are allot of resources on the
net to teach people UNIX commmands like 'ls' , 'pwd', 'man' etc... in
few days, you'll be UNIX guru just like you are a DOS guru now.

> As for Ada 95, we certainly can find one or two inexpensive compilers,
> or even free ones such as GNU, but the available assistance options make these
> far too costly for us. Mr Dewar mentioned support fees to us - if I recall
> correctly - starting at $12,000 a year. For a company with a single
> very-much-part-time programmer (me), that is, um, unrealistic.
>

then don't buy support.  how much do you pay for MS VC support? how much
do you pay for DOS support?

> I cannot stop
> working for a living to dedicate myself for several months to a >single-minded
> attempt to teach myself Ada in vacuo.
>

how did you learn C ?


> What's my point? One that both the Linux and Ada 95 communities might benefit
> from considering. MS and Borland achieved success by peddling usable languages
> and OSes at very low prices.

nothing is lower than 0.   You want ACT and GNU to pay you to use their
free products?

what do people want? someone to come feed them free food also?

>These languages and OSes, for all their imperfections, are usable.
>MS IDEs, such as the one that we use in VC v1.5,
> are user-friendly and almost intuitive once one gets a little way up the
> learning curve. Their OSes are almost usable right out of the box.

I am happy for you. then just use what you feel comfertable with. If DOS
and C is f> learning curve. Their OSes are almost usable right out of the box.

I am happy for you. then just use what you feel comfertable with. If DOS
and C is fine for you, then you should stay with that. do not complicate
your life with more advanced systems.

> Can you
> imagine buying Windows NT and being told that you now have to recompile the
> kernel in order to get your network card to work?

compiling linux Kernel takes 2-3 minutes on my p200 machine. You get a
nice GUI where you pick what you want to be build into the system. If
you find this is too technical I really have no idea why you are in the
real-time emmbeded programming field.  Try compiling DOS if you do not
like something in it and see how far you can go.

>Or being told that you are
> free to use the $99 language compiler, providing that you first agree to a
> $1,000 a month support contract?


THis is plain wrong. Who told you you need to buy a support contract to
use GNAT? this is so silly.

>
> In short, make the product useful to the end-user and usable with little
> difficulty and aggravation, and your language, Ada 95 or whatever, will be
> accepted.

for you, useful sounds like someone comming and hand feed  you one
instruction at a time. You say that you know nothing about Ada, and then
you say you want it to be more usable and less difficult. I guess
anything without a GUI for you is hard?

>
>         David Fisher
>         Chief Engineer
>         Fisher Research Corporation
>         Rochester, New York
>       the system. If
you find this is too technical I really have no idea why you are in the
real-time emmbeded programming field.  Try compiling DOS if you do not
like something in it and see how far you can go.

>Or being told that you are
> free to use the $99 language compiler, providing that you first agree to a
> $1,000 a month support contract?


THis is plain wrong. Who told you you need to buy a support contract to
use GNAT? this is so silly.

>
> In short, make the product useful to the end-user and usable with little
> difficulty and aggravation, and your language, Ada 95 or whatever, will be
> accepted.

for you, useful sounds like someone comming and hand feed  you one
instruction at a time. You say that you know nothing about Ada, and then
you say you want it to be more usable and less difficult. I guess
anything without a GUI for you is hard?

>
>         David Fisher
>         Chief Engineer
>         Fisher Research Corporation
>         Rochester, New York
>         [log in to unmask]
>         716 328 4230
>         fax 328 1984


Nasser

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