Re: ada-c++ productivity

[arny@cbnewsl.att.com (arny.b.engelson)]

In article <1991Mar16.205228.4268@grebyn.com> ted@grebyn.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>   "The GSA Board of Contract appeals issued a ruling last month that
>   could effect how the military evaluates the cost effectiveness of Ada
>   software.
>
>   "The board upheld a decision by the Air Force to award a contract to
>    a high-priced bidder based on a measure of productivity that equals
>    three lines of Ada code per programmer per day.
>
>    "A lower priced bidder, and others in the Ada community, said this
>    standard is much too low.  The protester in the case, DynaLantic
>    Corp, offered an average of ten lines of code per day per
>    programmer.
>
>    "Three lines of code per day is absurd [as if ten wasn't], said
>    Ralph Crafts, editor of a newsletter on Ada, and an expert
>    witness for the protester.....
>
>Whether any realistic combination of events exists which could reduce
>Pascal, C, or C++ programmers to this level of productivity is anybody's
>guess;  my own opinion is that most C programmers would require a bullet
>through the brain to be brought to such a level.
>
>Ted Holden

You don't quote prices for many large Air Force proposals, do you Ted?
A quoted productivity rate of 10 lines per staff day for the entire
development cycle is not unusual, REGARDLESS OF THE LANGUAGE.  The
apparently dismal productivity is caused by time taken to do the many
other things required by the customer (Air Force), including preparing
for and holding requirements, design, and test reviews, preparing the
many documents required, etc.  I have seen very similar productivity
figures for C, Ada, and other languages in this type of job.  The actual
coding phase goes along merrily at 50 to 200 lines per day (depending
on the programmer, and not including overtime :-) ).  Too bad the Air
Force won't simply take our word for it that the code works, and that
it does everything they want it to, and that if it ever has to be
changed, we'll all be around to make those changes for them.

You really ought to look deeper into things before posting an inflammatory
article based on a one column article in Federal Computer Week (or
wherever).  By the way, you (and everyone else) should go read the
Ada 9X Mapping Document and the Mapping Rationale Document, since the
availability of that language spells the downfall of C/C++  :-).
Wait, it's a joke, stop the language war, it's a joke.  But the documents
ARE very interesting reading.

  -- Arny Engelson   att!wayback!arny   (arny@wayback.att.com)