Re: Ada success story

[ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden)]

 
 
From:  Richard S D'Ippolito, Software Engineering Institute
 
 
>>You seem, however, to have little appreciation of the situation in which
>>the average poor slob who is forced to use Ada finds himself.  The Ada
>>compiler he gets to use is just the one provided on the contract by, you
>>guessed it, the lowest bidder.
 
>This is pure nonsense!  The choice of compilers was up to Hercules.  As far
>as "poor slobs" go, Jeff and I were members of the team in "the situation",
>so we certainly couldn't lack appreciation of our own endeavors, could we?
>Furthermore, this is not the first such project -- we have spent over three
>years producing just this kind of improvement of the Ada programmer's lot
>AND the resulting products.
 
I can believe that individual teams using PCs (for which Ada compiler costs
appear to run no higher than 1.5 times that of the machine) might
occasionally get to choose their own Ada compiler.  Most others haven't
been as fortunate.  Remember this point, however, when we get to the
point concerning left-out JED quotes below.
 
 
>>Consider that you will soon have to justify Ada on
>>a cost basis, and that almost all Ada programmers are contractors...
>>minor detail worth mentioning.
 
>And worth refuting.  I can give you the names of program officers who will
>insist that our methods with Ada reduce life-cycle costs and, more
>importantly, make possible products that aren't economically possible with
>any other language.  Finally, in this business, contractors are companies;
>programmers are people.
 
I've seen people insist they were Napoleon Bonaparte.
 
Unless you are claiming to be either:
 
        1. A government worker
 
or
 
        2. Working for GS-9 - GS-12 wages,
 
than the above is hardly what I would call a refutation.  I think almost
everybody reading this knows the difference in cost between government
workers and contractors.
 
 
>>UNIX, WordPerfect, DBASE-IV, X-11, Quattro, Sprint, News...  What if
>>any million-line projects have actually been successfully implemented in
>>Ada (without having major language problems in 10% of the code)?
 
>I'm sorry, but your insistent mis-interpretation of this reference forces me
>to expose your unethical methods:
 
 
You're out to set the entire U.S. military back 20 years in basic
computer science and you think I'm being unethical???
 
The exact quote was and remains:
 
     "In October, Magnavox reported that AFATDS contains 1,245,802 lines
     of code.  Ninety percent of the software requirements were met with
     no major software problems."
 
What's to misinterpret?  Since the entire article is about Ada, I assume
that the ten percent of the requirement which met with "major software
problems" involved Ada.  The (relatively simple) point which I was
making was that most people probably don't read these articles past the
headlines but that, if you did, you would more often than not find
evidence of the entire Ada program being in serious trouble;  things
such as a major league project having major language-related problems
with 124,580 (roughly) lines of code out of 1,245,802.  And this, of all
things, in articles and magazines whose vested interest, one would
have to assume, is in supporting Ada.
 
I'm afraid all you've exposed is your own inability to comprehend a
rather simple article and a rather simple rhetorical point.
 
 
>[several quotes from JED]
 
>The above quotes are from the guest editorial by Hugo Poza on pages 32 and
>33.  I am assuming, from your use of this issue, that it is unlikely that
>you would have skipped over these two pages in your search for negative
>material.  If you did indeed miss these and other similar items, then I
>apologize here and now for condemning your actions, but respectfully suggest
>that you improve your research methods.
 
You think maybe I left out too many valuable quotes from the AFATDS
article?????  No problem at all:
 
 
        1. "The language was very resource intensive in the host
           environment.  The compilers the project used were huge; very
           few compilations saturated the mainframe, and some Ada
           libraries were extensive."
 
        2. "The program libraries required a lot of recompiling.
 
 
        3. "The tasking implementations were so inefficient that
           portions of the data management system had to be re-designed
           to decrease the number of tasks."
 
        4. "The programs were made larger by overhead and runtime
           checks."
 
        5. "Ada's portability features made it difficult to store data
           efficiently."
 
 
        6. "Ada variant record structures often consumed more memory
           than expected."
 
 
Almost sounds like these guys might honestly be regarded as some of the
"poor slobs" I mentioned in the previous article".  Anybody still think
that point was "Nonsense"?
 
In fact, it almost sounds like the person writing all of this might have
had major software problems with at least ten percent of his requirements
and that this might have been caused by Ada.
 
You could search journal articles about C or C++ until the cows came home
and you would never find those kinds of comments.  C would simply not be
around if this were not the case.  Such is a free system, as opposed to
yours.
 
>Rest assured, however, that I will always respect your opinion of Ada by not
>inviting you to be on any of my Ada project teams.  Enough said.
 
Nonetheless, I plan on making quite a bit of money with Ada;  by cleaning
up the mess and teaching courses in C language and C++ after the fall.
 
I mean, to me at least, it's always seemed funny how some people seem to
have all the answers right up to the day when it's all over.  Take
Eric Honnecker, for example...
 
 
 
From: Horst Kern, PCS GmbH, Pfaelzer-Wald-Str. 36, 8000 Muenchen
 
>The recent discussion initiated by Ted Holdon's article surprised me
>a bit. Nobody answered the argument that I thought would be THE one
>in favor of Ada:
 
>  It's not the programmers that decide which language to use in the future
 
>In the European Market we expect to have laws in 1992 that resemble the
>American Laws of Product Responsibility. As far as I know, those can make
>an implementor responsible for any consequences of using an implementation
>language which is not considered the best choice.  And there are strong
>signals that Ada will be the default 'best choice' for lawyers. Is this
>not true for the US?
 
Das gefaehlt mir sehr; Advocaten VERDIENEN Ada (und alle andere Wehe und
Ungluecke).
 
Most other victims of Ada are, however, innocent and undeserving.
 
 
Ted Holden
HTE