Re: Open comment to Ted Holden

[att!cbnews!cbnewsl!willett@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (david.c.willett)]

>From article <1992Apr9.155334.20536@schaefer.math.wisc.edu>, by nedervol@schae
fer.math.wisc.edu (Eric Nedervold):
> SAHARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU writes:
>>  No matter what Army software costs it is cheaper than the
>>alternative.  Imagine an enemy with Apache helicopter
>>equivalents in your home town for an hour. The national
>>debt may be huge but it is not as huge as the cost of
>>rebuilding Wash DC or New Yoork after a nuclear attack.
>>And, as an extra added benefit, we are alive and well
>>and our infrastructure is intact and we can work to
>>pay off that debt.
> 
> Does this argument extend to hardware too?  Like $500 toilet seats?
> 
> --Eric Nedervold
>

Oh, I *had* to jump in here on this one.  The issue in the original post
as well as the two follow-ups I've read seems to be:

	Are MIL-SPECs worth the cost?  They sure don't seem to be, but
we haven't had to re-fight WWII yet.  I have worked with 40-year old 
MIL-SPEC hardware that wouldn't have been available to me if it hadn't 
been built so ruggedly.  Greg pointed out that commercial GPS receivers
served well in the Gulf.  I would point out that the ground war there 
lasted approx. 100 hours and the entire military campaign less than
3 months.  In my opinion, that is not a fair test.  

Remember that military equipment must be able to function in spite of battle 
damage.  In a system heavily dependent on software (most are nowdays), 
survivability has a lot to do with the software being modular as well as being
able to respond to exceptions (i.e. that channel is down -- use another).  It
seems to me that Ada was designed to facilitate production of that sort of 
software.

With regard to Ada not being cost effective, I would submit that the
"commercial" world has not yet reached the degree of dependence on software tha
t
our high-tech military "enjoys".  It is getting there fast though.  I think
Ada's advantages will become apparent in the commercial world in the next 
decade.  Of course, just because the advantages of software engineering 
methodology become well known, doesn't mean that Ada itself will be successful.
There could very well be newer languages that will do what Ada does "better".
When these languages arrive, DoD would do well to encourage their use.

Dave