Re: Air Force helping to undermine Ada

[joshua@Veritas.COM (Joshua Levy)]

In article <9303100635.aa26443@dsc.blm.gov> cjames@DSC.BLM.GOV (Colin James 0621) writes:
>The NetWorld article states that the USAF is using a commercial off the
>software product.  In DoD it is standard operating procedure
>to use COTS rather than constantly reinvent the wheel.
>
>The comments attached to the article criticize the USAF for following
>orders which have nothing to do with the mandated use of Ada.  Hence the
>comments do not follow logically and are known as a non sequitor argument.

I don't think you understood the product the USAF bought.  It requires
integration with other products, customizations, and additions.  All of
this work must* be done in C.  Since this work is programming, by buying
a product which requires, C the USAF is (in a sense) mandating C for
that integration, customization, and addition work.  

If the USAF had required that the integration, etc. work be done in ADA,
they would have gotten some other product.  Or, more likely, they would
have had to pay someone to develop it all from scratch in ADA.

But that leads into the Real Problem (tm): there are almost no off the 
shelf products written in ADA.  So if you want to take full advantage
of a commercial product's API, you need to program in C, or some other
common language.  It is not impossible to use ADA in these situations,
but it is much harder than using C.  

* = "Must" might be a little strong here, but the commercial product's
interfaces and documenation all expect C, so using another language 
would be very difficult.

Joshua Levy   (joshua@veritas.com)