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-Thread: 103376,93a8020cc980d113 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: What is wrong with Ada? Date: 21 Apr 2007 14:42:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1177191752.446426.127770@p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> References: <1176150704.130880.248080@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> <1177160171.286985.167860@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> <1177163425.459427.175280@b58g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1177166815.755789.85970@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.70.221.169 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1177191752 17515 127.0.0.1 (21 Apr 2007 21:42:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:42:32 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <1177166815.755789.85970@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.11) Gecko/20070312 Firefox/1.5.0.11,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.70.221.169; posting-account=SqOfxAwAAAAkL81YAPGH1JdBwpUXw9ZG Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:15199 Date: 2007-04-21T14:42:32-07:00 List-Id: On Apr 21, 8:46 am, AJAskey wrote: > On Apr 21, 9:50 am, "jimmaureenrog...@worldnet.att.net" > > wrote: > > I do not know which planet you live on. I started downloading GNAT > > in 1994 and have been using it on my home machine since then. > > Sure the geeks could download stuff in 1994. The average person did > not have this opportunity until the late 1990s - after the DoD > shutdown the Ada funding. Google ADA and see all the sites that have > not been updated since 1998. Ada need to be marketed to program > managers, not developers. In 2000, there were plenty of advocates in > the developer community. As time goes on, PMs know less and less > about Ada. > > The average person never learned programming. I do not know who you are referring to when you refer to "the average person". There were never plenty of Ada advocates. Ada was never a fad language. Several years ago I taught Java to an investment firm. All their legacy code was written in COBOL. The Vice President in charge of information systems announced, without consulting any developers, that the company was moving all its programming to Java. During the class one of the students asked me what kind of performance improvement they should expect from Java over COBOL. I told them, if they were lucky they would see a -30% increase. Yes, that is a negative increase. Java was not cheaper than COBOL for this organization. They currently had all the tools and training needed to support COBOL. According to the students the Vice President made the change after talking with some of his friends at his country club. Everybody else was using Java. He felt embarrassed that his organization still used COBOL. Programming language choices are seldom made based upon either economics or technical merit. Managers choose programming languages because it is safe to run with the herd. > We downloaded Java for free with free Netbeans and Eclipse. If we > need a "tool" then we do need to go through the evaluation process. > But the problem is that Ada is the "base" and not a "tool". No one is > going to pay for entry into a development language when others are > free. People will pay to enhance the tool. But paying to evaluate > something on a small scale for a year isn't going to happen on a > regular basis. Try downloading C++ for free with the equivalent of Netbeans. Eclipse is a wash for all its supported languages. Did your application need to do anything Java cannot do by itself? For instance, did it need to interface with any existing libraries written in another language? If so, you needed another language such as C or C++, as well as somebody who understands how to write a Java Native Interface for the foreign code. This means acquiring tools and training in at least two languages. What is the cost of tools and training for any specific language? How does that cost compare to the development and testing costs for production code? The tools and training costs are typically less than 1% of the development costs for a project producing over 1,000,000 SLOC. One might well ask what are the different testing costs for different languages. Many people would be surprised by the question. As mentioned in another thread, I am the software safety engineer on an extremely safety critical software project. The management chose C++ as the primary language for development of new code for this project. The decision was made before I was hired. For C++ to be as safe as Ada, you need to specify a very strict subset of C++. One example of such a subset is the JSF C++ Avionics Coding Standard. It contains 221 rules. Approximately 200 of those rules are specification of a C++ subset. The cost of verifying 221 rules against 2,000,000 lines of code is extremely high. Some of the rules checking can be automated. Some cannot. None of those costs (manual checking and creation of automated checkers) would have been encountered if management had chosen Ada. None of those costs were considered when the decision was made. Jim Rogers