Re: Ada 9X paper

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.]

In article <1992Jan07.142237.9959@news.mentorg.com> samg@roguecom (Sam Griffith
 x7588) writes:
>I was wondering where I can get an Ada 9X draft paper?  Also, I took Ada
>in school about 4 years ago, and I was wondering what the job market is like
>for Ada programmers.  I have been doing OOP work for 5 years now, and most of
>it has been in C++, Obj-C and Smalltalk.
>
We're working on a small Ada project (about 50,000 lines of code).  My SW
contractor has had difficulty finding people who _really_ know Ada to work for
him. One of the questions they ask an interviewee is "What is the difference
between a derived-type and a sub-type?"  Surprisingly enough, not everyone
they interview (who supposedly "knows" Ada) can answer this question.

Apparently, most DOD Ada applications have had complexities on the order of
simply replacing Fortran with Ada.  Our application involves a distributed
arcitecture, multi-tasking, and a number of binding requirements (X-Windows
and POSIX).

We've had a number of difficulties finding an Ada compiler which actually
performs well enough to meet our needs.  Most of the Ada compilers simply
have too many bugs to be useful.  Even more "mature" compilers have demonstrate
d
enough bugs to make them worthless.  In fact, we are betting a lot that the
"latest" version of a certain compiler will have much needed features and
"fixed" bugs.  

This situation is very frustrating because my software contractor has spent
the past few month running around trying to get an Ada compiler that actually
works (or working bug fixes) rather than designing code.  I can't blame them
too much because a working Ada compiler is sort of on the critical path to
success in our development effort.

Some of the more "unique" (are they really all that unique?) things we're
now doing are:

1.  Writing TCP/IP Ada code which provide the functionality of pipes and
remote procedure calls for this distributed architecture system.  We need
to be able to connect (for example) an personal computer to a workstation.

2.  Building a subset of the Ada POSIX interface as defined in the IEEE drft
spec 1003.5 (which recently failed in balloting).  We still need these 
services and must now build them ourselves.

3.  Trying to find X-Windows bindings which work well with our design (we
have a fairly good handle on this now).

Every time we find an Ada compiler bug, we spend about two days trying to
isolate the problem and finding a robust work-around solution.

I've spent enough time complaining about Ada compiler bugs, does anybody
have any information pertaining to Ada code which provides TCP/IP interprocess
communication functions and also POSIX interface code which is available
to the DoD?

---Dan---
-- 
+ Captain Daniel F. Van Der Werken, Jr., USAF |  I do not speak for the Air
+ Rome Laboratory/OCDS                        |  Force, otherwise I'll be
+ Griffiss AFB, NY 13441                      |  in Kansas making big rocks
+ (315) 330-4441/DSN 587-4441                 |  into little rocks!