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=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,86616b1931cbdae5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Paul Van Bellinghen" Subject: Re: Is Ada likely to survive ? Date: 1997/07/20 Message-ID: <01bc9558$f3379ca0$19a9f5cd@asip120>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 257885065 References: <33D005F2.E5DCD710@kaiwan.com> X-Server-Date: 20 Jul 1997 22:06:41 GMT Organization: Home Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-07-20T22:06:41+00:00 List-Id: > I am a little puzzled by (2), hard to find = high market value. But perhaps > what you should be looking for anyway is *good* programmers. Good programmers > should be easily able to adjust to Ada, and quickly get to the point of being > able to take advantage of it. An interesting illustration of this was the > Airfields project, the first fielded system in Ada 95, which was largely > written by people with no experience in Ada (I believe some of them were > in fact COBOL programmers). Despite the fact they were new to the language > and were using a quite preliminary version of GNAT, this project was a great > success. > I think the man is sold on Ada and does not have a problem training "good" programmers in using Ada for the company's RT embedded apps. However, I think he is concerned about drawing the best talent to his company when he needs to staff up. I know we have been having trouble in this area (we use Ada exclusively for our RTE apps - a step up from assembly language which we were doing up until a few years ago). Many of the candidates we interview are concerned about the future of the Ada language. Even the DOD may be moving away from it (there are advocates for both C++ and Ada in the DOD). I was interviewing for a possible change in companies earlier this year and I can tell you that these companies are VERY concerned about the languages you are familiar with. Even though I have had only limited experience in using C for RTE apps, I insured these companies that a seasoned software engineer can become proficient in any language since it is just a tool - a means to an end ( I have been doing this stuff for 22 years - one of those early EEs that switched to SW) . What matters, I told them, is having experience in applying good programming techniques to RTE designs. Of course, it fell on deaf ears. > As to (3), whether your code is maintainable or not depends on whether it > is maintainable code. As you note, you know the advantages of Ada, and one > of the big advantages is precisely that both the language and the culture > of programmers using the language encourage the production of maintainable > code. An unmaintainable program in a familiar language is not easier to > maintain than a maintainable program in almost any language. Here, I think he is concerned that his programmers, if trained in another language, can learn Ada in order to maintain these programs. I don't think he will have a problem in this area.