Re: Thus spake the DoD...

[colbert@spp1.UUCP (Ed Colbert)]

>...  I think that Pascal is a fine tool for certain things, and Lord
>knows I certainly hope that the DoD finds some fine applications for Ada one
>of these centuries, since I'd like to see some kind of return for all the
>red ink we spill.  But seriously, folks, I have yet to see a profitable Ada
>program, and so has the DoD.
>
>Ted Jardine

You will be pleased to know that in 1981 a company called INTELEMAC wrote 2
buisness applications in Ada which it successfully marketed.  Also the
flight software for Northrup's F-20 is written in Ada & is successfully
completed its flight tests.

In fact,  Ada is a very nice language to use for MANY applications and the
people/companies that have used it, report tremendous productivity
improvements (the gains come during unit testing & integration & test
phases, there hasn't been enough time yet to determine the gains during the
maintainace phase).

The major cost of Ada is training.  There are 2 reasons for this:

	1) It unquestionably takes more time to for someone to learn
	   Ada to the degree where they can FULLY utilizies its
	   capabilities and FULLY understand the language.  However,
	   this is at least partially do to the fact that there is so
	   much capability in Ada.
	   [NOTE: this is base both on my personal experience in
	   learning Ada & in teaching it.]

	2) Most programmers don't know Ada.

The second problem will decrease over time as more & more people learn Ada.
Also some of the cost of this instruction will be recoverd since people will
not have to be learn a new language every time they switch to a new
machine or project once they have learn Ada.


Ed Colbert