Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Jamie Schrumpf]

This post came from another group, but certainly has bearing here.  Can anyone 
comment on Ted's claim that IBM's failure to redesign the air traffic system 
was due to Ada?


In article <56khk1$4p7@news4.digex.net>, medved@access.digex.net says...
>
>jamie@dcd00745.slip.digex.net (Jamie Schrumpf) wrote:
>
>
>>>> Instead of counting sheep tonight, try to imagine what it must take
>>>> for IBM to walk away from five billion dollars;  see how long it
>>>> takes you to get to sleep.
>
>>I didn't get the originial of this, but I think it bears comment nonetheless.
>
>>I am yet another Ada s/w engineer for the US government...
>
>Why doesn't that surprise me...
>
>>and I support a 1 
>>meg-lines-o'code mapping workstation for NIMA.  There are about 5 different 
>>systems, including mine, that make up the production system, and only the Ada 
>>piece works well enough to really be a production-quality system.  It does 
what 
>>it's supposed to do, and the exception handling is excellent (where it was 
>>written well, as with all code).
>
>Ada was originally mandated for all military software projects, and is now 
being
>allowed to quietly fade away and die.  Charles Hoare categorized it as an 
unsafe
>language and warned western nations to avoid it in his acceptance speech for
>the Turing award in 1980;  virtually all large projects which have attempted 
to
>use it have failed on account of it.  Gen. Short said that Ada would live or 
die
>with Stanfins;  Stanfins died due to Ada.
>
>A BBS set up to receive recommendations for the next version of Ada received
>a major outpouring of real grief from programmers and engineers all over the
>country, real reasons why vertually every feature of the language was either
>disfunctional of basically indadequate, and real reasons why the language
>could not be used for virtually all of its intended purposes.  
>
>Ada used to be one of my causes on the net, but there is no point in beating
>dead horses.  I hope to see evolution take its place with Ada in the burial
>ground of dead sheboleths within the next five years.
>
>>Ted's claim that IBM walked away from a contract worth $5 billion because it 
>>had to be written is Ada is false. 
>
>IBM sold the entire Bethesda Md. branch involved in that paroject to Loral, 
and
>then the project was abandoned.  Ada was the chief cause of the failure.  
>
>
>Ted Holden
>medved@digex.com
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamie Schrumpf                            http://www.access.digex.net/~moncomm
"It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as
it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as
you have got it."    ---  Edmund Way Teale, "Circle of the Seasons"

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Robert Dewar]

Regarding the (perfectly silly and uninformed) comments that Stanfins died
due to Ada (it was in fact a highly successful project technically), and
that the failure of the IBM ATC effort was due to Ada (the problems ha
d nothing to do with Ada), I have one comment: The author was Ted Holden,
who we have not heard from for a while here -- but those with long enough
memories will understand!

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Vincent Celier]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Regarding the (perfectly silly and uninformed) comments that Stanfins died
> due to Ada (it was in fact a highly successful project technically), and
> that the failure of the IBM ATC effort was due to Ada (the problems ha
> d nothing to do with Ada), I have one comment: The author was Ted Holden,
> who we have not heard from for a while here -- but those with long enough
> memories will understand!

I remember Ted Holden perfectly.

Please, DO NOT reply to him.  We are currently free of really nasty Ada
haters these
days, let's not a new war.

-- Vincent Celier,
-- 9100 McCutcheon Place, RICHMOND, B.C.
-- CANADA, V7A 5A5
-- +1 (604) 241-9811

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Matthew Heaney]

>>IBM sold the entire Bethesda Md. branch involved in that paroject to Loral, 
>and
>>then the project was abandoned.  Ada was the chief cause of the failure.

Time and time again I've seen Ada criticized.  Why is Ada every lame
programmer's whipping post?  Why don't these guys get a life?

Why don't these programmers - instead of blaming Ada - just admit they
don't have a clue about software engineering?

Ada was not the cause of the failure.  Management was the cause of the
failure.  Why can't software managers take responsibility for their own
inability to do their jobs?

If you don't know how to construct a large, complex software system, then
the problem is that you don't know how construct a large, complex software
system.  That Ada was somehow the cause is a completely specious argument. 
As if you could do it better with some other language.

The author of the original post seems like yet another poor programmer who
values cleverness and obfuscation over elegance and understandability. 
Feeling a little intimidated by Ada, are we?  Maybe it's time you got a
different hobby.

Now that Ada's got inheritance, polymorphism, and function & stack-variable
pointers, those captious, anti-Ada programmers don't have anything left to
criticize.  But that doesn't seem to stop them.

Ada is moribund?  Put a nail in Ada's coffin, you say?  Not while I have
anything to say about it.

M.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
mheaney@ni.net
(818) 985-1271

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Ron Thompson]

mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney) wrote:
>
>>>IBM sold the entire Bethesda Md. branch involved in that paroject to Loral, 
>>and
>>>then the project was abandoned.  Ada was the chief cause of the failure.
>

One more time:
AAS died after 8 plus years of overrunning the budget and
doing things the old boy, big blue, 1955 way.  Period.
They could have been providing a simple upgrade to the 
original code, and they would have dumped that project because
of the way it was going.  It is a new world, and it took 
congress and faa a while to figure out that things can NOT
be done that way anymore.

One more time: Ada, or any other language for that matter,
had NOTHING to do with dumping that project.  Period.

rct
aos 420 (Terminal Operational Support)(thats the faa)

The opininons above are mine and mine alone.  The facts are
well documented.

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[deannelson]

In article <56l5s7$699@news4.digex.net>, jamie@dcd00745.slip.digex.net
(Jamie Schrumpf) writes:

>>>Ted's claim that IBM walked away from a contract worth $5 billion
because
>it 
>>>had to be written is Ada is false. 
>>
>>IBM sold the entire Bethesda Md. branch involved in that paroject to
Loral, 
>and
>>then the project was abandoned.  Ada was the chief cause of the failure.
 
>>

Doesn't anyone really pay attention or read the papers?

True, IBM sold their Federal Systems branch to Loral. THE PROJECT WAS 
NOT ABANDONED! Lockheed bought Loral, but the Fed Sys branch was in the
running for this contract up until it was awarded to Raytheon, a few
months ago.
I was in close contact with our Fed Sys branch, as we, in Las Vegas,
developed
some special cards for this project. 


Dean Nelson
Lockheed Martin
Las Vegas, Nv

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[William Frye]

Jamie Schrumpf (jamie@dcd00745.slip.digex.net) wrote:
: This post came from another group, but certainly has bearing here.  Can anyone 
: comment on Ted's claim that IBM's failure to redesign the air traffic system 
: was due to Ada?

I have'nt seen any names here that I remember from the AAS project so here's my 
$0.02 worth.  There were certainly problems in the early days of the contract
with inadequate compilers.  The last I knew there was still not an adequate
dbugger installed (I don't know if there was one for the environment or not).
These still were probably far less important than the problems of undersanding
the requirements and keeping them within the scope of feasiblity.

: -- 
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Jamie Schrumpf                            http://www.access.digex.net/~moncomm
: "It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as
: it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as
: you have got it."    ---  Edmund Way Teale, "Circle of the Seasons"

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Robert B. Love]

In <56l5s7$699@news4.digex.net> Jamie Schrumpf wrote:
> This post came from another group, but certainly has bearing here.  
Can anyone 
> comment on Ted's claim that IBM's failure to redesign the air traffic 
system 
> was due to Ada?

Well, lets look at other examples where Ada is used in Air Traffic 
Control and then you judge.

Thompson of France has bragged that it has created the ATC system for
over 30 nations using Ada and is approaching 90% code reuse.

Austrailia created its own ATC system in Ada.

Canada is currently redoing/upgrading its ATC in Ada and the contractor
is hiring more Ada programmers as we speak.

Ada has many success stories in Air Traffic Control.  Now, do you want
to blame Ada for the US failure?  Clearly the language is up to the
task.  Some programmers or their management may not be up to the task.


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Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Jon S Anthony]

In article <56l5s7$699@news4.digex.net> jamie@dcd00745.slip.digex.net (Jamie Schrumpf) writes:

> This post came from another group, but certainly has bearing here.
> Can anyone comment on Ted's claim that IBM's failure to redesign the
> air traffic system was due to Ada?

Ted Holden is a well known flaming lunatic of the Net.  Lot's of (to
put it kindly) bizarre opinion and basically never any factual
information.

/Jon

-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com

Re: Ada caused failure of IBM's attempt to redesign air traffic system?

[Jamie Schrumpf]

In article <JSA.96Nov18210950@alexandria>, jsa@alexandria says...
>
>In article <56l5s7$699@news4.digex.net> jamie@dcd00745.slip.digex.net (Jamie 
Schrumpf) writes:
>
>> This post came from another group, but certainly has bearing here.
>> Can anyone comment on Ted's claim that IBM's failure to redesign the
>> air traffic system was due to Ada?
>
>Ted Holden is a well known flaming lunatic of the Net.  Lot's of (to
>put it kindly) bizarre opinion and basically never any factual
>information.
>
>/Jon
>
>-- 
>Jon Anthony
>Organon Motives, Inc.
>Belmont, MA 02178
>617.484.3383
>jsa@organon.com
>

I've read the comments about Ted from various folk with high amusement.  I 
brought his comments over from talk.origins, where he is also well-known as a 
net.loon.

That his opinions on Ada are as equally misinformed as are his opinions on 
every other subject I've seen him pontificate about strikes me as no great 
surprise.  I won't repost any of the aforementioned comments back to him, as it 
might only serve to bring him back over here -- which we certainly do not want.

Thanks for all the info.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamie Schrumpf                            http://www.access.digex.net/~moncomm
"It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as
it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as
you have got it."    ---  Edmund Way Teale, "Circle of the Seasons"