Ada in Industry: Merit not Mandate

[pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)]

One of my ex-students is now highly placed in Boeing Commercial (not
Aerospace - the government contracting division).  He is in charge of
Avionics for the new 777.  He reported to me that of the expected 10M lines
of avionics code, about 60% will be written in Ada (this is up from 2M lines
out of 6M in their last plane).  He says almost all new software will be
written in Ada: much of the 4M lines of non-Ada code will control more
straightforward systems unchanged from previous airplanes.

The numbers are approximate, but I believe that this is an example of a
company in an economically competitive market that has chosen to use Ada
based on merit, not mandate.

Rich Pattis