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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,563d1b715d872ad1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-06 17:00:25 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!sjcppf01.usenetserver.com!usenetserver.com!news-west.rr.com!cyclone.tampabay.rr.com!news-post.tampabay.rr.com!typhoon.southeast.rr.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Emery Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: why? US Army Ada software converted to C++? Message-ID: <061020011935502631%demery@cox.rr.com> References: <9pnumq02o3u@drn.newsguy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit User-Agent: YA-NewsWatcher/4.2.4 Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 23:35:30 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.61.175.80 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rr.com X-Trace: typhoon.southeast.rr.com 1002411330 66.61.175.80 (Sat, 06 Oct 2001 19:35:30 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 19:35:30 EDT Organization: RoadRunner - Cox Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:13840 Date: 2001-10-06T23:35:30+00:00 List-Id: In article <9pnumq02o3u@drn.newsguy.com>, wrote: > Air defense moving to C++ from Ada? are they crazy? with > all the evidence that Ada is safer and more reliable than any C variation > based language, who would make such a decision? Our tax payers money > is being wasted here. What a waste. Is this supposed to make our defense > software better? One of the most common reasons I hear for contractors moving from Ada is that they can't find Ada programmers. My own hypothesis is that they're not willing to pay enough. Anecdotally, I know a lot of Ada people that make -much more- money doing C (because they're generally substantially better than their peers who have only C experience.) Of course, though, if they do not advertise for Ada programmers, they are unlikely to get any :-( But in general language/sw technology decisions are not based on any particular engineering analysis, but rather business case and perceptions of what the customer wants to hear and what the managers believe will be most profitable/least cost. At the risk of raising old ghosts, DoD is guilty, in my view, for not performing the full life-cycle analysis that was possible about 7 or 8 years ago, when Mr. Emmett Paige held his "Ada Dual-Use Symposia". I said then, and I still believe, that the DoD has sufficient data to determine if Ada does provide life cycle (or even purely development) cost savings. The only study I saw on Ada maintenance (done in 1990 with preliminary data from a few programs) said that Ada costs were _LINEAR_ on SLOC counts. COCOMO shows the cost to be _EXPONENTIAL_ for other languages. dave