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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!bernina!neptune!c!mneerach From: mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada Message-ID: <18640@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> Date: 18 Dec 90 17:37:08 GMT References: <737@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> <2449@sparko.gwu.edu> <18173@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch Reply-To: mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich List-Id: 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_