Re: IBM & Air Traffic Control

[aio!news@tmc.edu]

In article <1992Dec12.002523.27592@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) writes:
>
>In today's NYT business section, there was an article about the government
>threatening to cancel a $3.8 billion contract with IBM to overhaul the
>air traffic control system. It says
>
>  "Because of a software foul-up, the contract with the FAA has already
>   suffered an 18 month delay...The problems involve testing and integrating
>   software in what is called the initial sector suite system..."
>
>This seems like a very large and embarasing screwup.

Unfortuantely this will probably give the Chicken Littles of Ada another reason
for Ada "falling", I mean, "failing" even though it is not a language problem.
There are other factors involved such as the lack of a stable development
environment and the transition to yet another IBM platform in the middle of
development. Given any project in any language, this would play havoc on any
schedule.


>
>Anyone know more about the project. I thought the air traffic control stuff
was
>being done "mostly" in Ada; if not, anyone know what language was used. Even
>better, anyone know what is "really" behind the delay.
>
>Rich Pattis
>
>
>-- 
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Richard E. Pattis                     "Programming languages are like
>  Department of Computer Science         pizzas - they come in only "too"
>    and Engineering                      sizes: too big and too small."
>



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John R. Cobarruvias, Texas A&M Class of '78, 
NASA Johnson Space Center Houston Tx.
(713)483-9357

"And to think..................I hesitated" (Hellraiser II)
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