Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada

[mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher)]

In article <737@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu>, progers@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Pat Rogers)
writes:
> In article <18173@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>, mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch
(Matthias Ulrich Neeracher) writes:
> > But then again, has there *ever* been something cost-effective
> > produced for the Department of Defense ?
> 
> Quite a bit, I would think.  COBOL is not my favorite language, but it would
> be difficult not to consider it quite an advance for the times, and cost-
> effective over its lifetime.  

COBOL must have been an interesting idea in its time. The mistake, IMO, was to
massively push its use. The "user-friendly" syntax seems now almost
universally 
to be recognized as a disaster. As for cost-effective, I wonder whether it 
wouldn't have been even more cost-effective to delay the standardization for
some years, in favor of a better language. I don't doubt that COBOL was a 
progress when it was created, but for how many years now has COBOL been a
hindrance to progress.
   Likewise, I wonder whether it is really necessary and wise to hard-code all
these laws requiring use of Ada now, thus forcing programmers to live with
Ada's inconveniences for maybe 50 years or longer.

> With respect to Ada, I have seen
> a presentation by a fellow consultant to the effect that, once familiar with
> the language, a very considerable increase in productivity is
typical/possible.
> (So it is not just a maintenance issue.)  The distinguishing thing about the 
> presentation is that he claims to have the data to prove it -- a database of 
> many (>100) projects.  My personal experience with the language (10 years) 
> agrees with his assertion.

Does this data take into account that programmers using Ada were maybe subject
to a lot of additional training ? At least in one small study I have
read about,
I wondered whether the (indisputable) improvements had anything to do at all
with Ada or whether not all this could be explained with the improved training
of the programmers and the greater attention given to them.
 
> Pat Rogers

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch
   "These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can 
    even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, _Johnny Mnemonic_