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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8264dac98bc604d8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-12 17:57:47 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!newshub.nosc.mil!news!cod!sampson From: sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) Subject: Re: The actual quote from the Post AAS article Message-ID: <1993Mar12.231552.6129@nosc.mil> Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation References: <1no3fbINN3h7@umbc4.umbc.edu> <1993Mar12.161548.6286@evb.com> Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 23:15:52 GMT Date: 1993-03-12T23:15:52+00:00 List-Id: In article <1993Mar12.161548.6286@evb.com> pole@evb.com (Tom Pole) writes: -In article <1no3fbINN3h7@umbc4.umbc.edu> berman@umbc.edu (Mike Berman) writes: -> ->There have been a few posts referring to the 8 March Washington Post ->article, "Out-of-Control Contract - How IBM's Effort to Modernize FAA's ->Air Traffic Monitoring System Went Awry". -> ->Out of a several hundred word (~60 column inch) article, Ada is mentioned ->directly in one paragraph only: -> -> "Adding a further level of complexity was the -> government's insistence that the entire project be done using a -> new computer language called Ada. The federal government was -> attempting to control a muddle of incompatible software -> languages by standardizing, but many programmers had to learn -> the exotic language from scratch." -> ->"... new ..."? "... exotic ..."?!? - -... other good stuff deleted. - -> ->Any attempt to assert, based on the information in this article, that Ada ->is the sole reason for failure, or even a major contributing factor, is ->absurd. This project would have failed using any implementation ->language. -> - -The point is that these problems were known to be the major culprits -in the "software crises" and Ada was supposed to solve them. I've lost track of who edited whom, but what is missing in the above is a large number of claims about non-programming problems, among them one that mid-level IBM managers had been circumventing established proce- dures for vetting software. I don't know of any language that can solve that problem. I certainly don't think Ada proponents have every claimed it for Ada. Charlie