From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,af427a258342c00,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays) Subject: DoD Ada95: Nasa buys an Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD. Date: 1996/03/27 Message-ID: <00001a73+00002c2e@msn.com> X-Deja-AN: 144340872 organization: The Microsoft Network (msn.com) newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-03-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Subject: NASA buys the Thomson Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD. Greetings, Due to many rumors and critisms about Ada95 in the defense industry, I will try to set the record straight in simple terms. The Department of Defense is standing behind Ada95. All of their work is falling under both the CIM (Corporate Information Management) and C4I (Command, Control, Communication, Computers and Intelligence) which will support this programming language (one day). Why? The cost effectiveness and efficiency of maintaining Ada95 over C++ is one of many reasons. The main areas are long-term maintainance and support. The DoD is concerned that years from now, will the programmers of tommorrow understand the programs of today?! There was a rumor about waivers to use C++ in place of Ada95. This is NOT going to happen, based on the DoD mandate. My recent notes on this subject explains that in a life development cycle you provide leeway to use both programming languages - where it is cost effective and not time-consuming (think productivity). I don't think I need to go into a discussion on system programming versus application programming. Why use PowerBuilder/Delphi/Visual Basic when you can do it all in C++??? (Oh no Ken, don't say that!) Sidenote: The concept of this is when I did system/application programming utilizing DEC PDP-11 minicomputers in the 1980s, We used BASIC/BASIC-PLUS/PASCAL for the majority of our work. The code was extremely easy to maintain, understand, and very productive. Then, we had to start programming in C on a DEC VAX-11/780. Our team leader was from MIT, and he even barked at the use of C (what a waste of time). We spent days looking at code - trying to figure out what the previous DEC engineers had done. We managed to get by, and in 1984 I got smart and bought the C Primer Book (the first edition) from The Waite Group. Learning C was a little easier than programming in PDP-11 assembler, but there lies the same principle. It is NOT cost effective to use assembler where C++ is sufficient, neither is it cost effective to use C++ where Ada95 works very well. You are dealing with nonprogrammers as well as programmers - it relates to what project you are working on and the maintainance and/or support people of that project. Kind of an MIS project management issue. Pull out your PERT/CPM charts! The DoD COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) ideas merit the use of commercially buying available software - so its not the DoD's fault if the compiler writers don't comply to the current standard. You can't blame the DoD for decent Ada95 tutorials not available at your local bookstore. Is there a book on "Teaching Yourself Ada95 in 21 Days" by Sams Publishing (no offense)?? Will it come with a CD with a free Ada95 compiler and Ada95 tools so you can do decent programming on your IBM-PC compatible computer AT HOME!!!???!!?? I see Visual C++ V1.0 and V2.0 are available in bookstores with the book on "Teaching Yourself Visual C++ in 12 easy lessons." Are you still waiting on djgpp V2.x for use with GNAT-95 V3.03 for MSDOS? More waiting? Guess you'll use the Linux version again! I state this with the reason that in over a million homes, the IBM PC (compatible) is the commonplace home computer (besides the Commodore-Amiga computer (smile)). Why then, are we not emphasizing more Ada95 tools on the PC that we can port to our mainframe/minicomputer counterparts?!? Is there a SGI laptop home computer in the house? I'd rather install Slackware Linux on a PC laptop and see real productive work in Ada95 on a plane ride to Ada-Europe!!! The Department of Defense should look more at helping the "closet engineers" and home hobbyists who have made the Internet (even TCP/IP NT (V6) and MBone) what it is today. Put Ada95 tools in the hands on small businesses and students - not expensive workstations or ineffective noncomplaint Ada95 compilers (no fingers pointed)! Tell the truth about Ada95 and how we can help, and stop trying to slap marketing hype in our faces. Many programmers don't have a clue about ATLAS and JOVIAL. They probably never programmed in Smalltalk 80/V or RPG II or COBOL (ha). They don't have to maintain these languages, so why should they care? When you have to start paying billions of dollars in maintaining "buggy" code (not to leave Ada95 out of that arena), you too will start looking for a programming language that is not only a little more productive - but somewhat EASIER to maintain and debug as well. ; -) Ken L. Mays Please refer to: htp://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/lists/c4ipro http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC Other hotspots: http://www.acm.org/SigAda http://www.algonet.se/~agora/ada http://www.docs.uu.se/disada95 http://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu