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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,6ec8df5df532a28f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news2.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!atl-c08.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!pc03.usenetserver.com!KNOLOGY.NET-a2kHrUvQQWlmc!not-for-mail Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 09:55:53 -0500 From: "Marc A. Criley" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: What is Delta?? References: <1147335626.779489.9240@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <2914908.GvrD7n1EFI@linux1.krischik.com> <1147952419.008146.149720@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <1ffb2$4471d0f7$45491254$22925@KNOLOGY.NET> X-Complaints-To: abuse@usenetserver.com Organization: UseNetServer.com X-Trace: 1ffb24471d0f7e0ecb7f122925 Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4336 Date: 2006-05-22T09:55:53-05:00 List-Id: M E Leypold wrote: > "Ludovic Brenta" writes: > >> More specifically, my guess is that some company has subcontracted the >> safety-critical avionics software to an Indian university. The >> university wants to use the project to promote itself as a centre of >> high-tech know-how, and the students will write interesting theses >> based on the project. So far, so good. The only problem is that none of >> the students know the first thing about Ada or safety-critical >> software, and they don't even know how to ask on the usenet. They're >> students, after all (and probably even cheaper than Indian >> professionals). > > Do things like this actually happen? I mean -- has anything of that > style happened before? I'm just wondering -- it seems so > unbelievable ... I can't say whether this his actually happened with regard to an Indian university or some other outsourcing initiative, but I do know that significant systems have been written in Ada in the late 90s by programmers in the US having little or no exposure to the language prior to the project. An experienced Ada programmer knows what Ada code should look like, in terms of definitions, structures, and interactions. A system that was dumped in my lap to port to a new OS version and compiler included the following: - A set of project-standard integer types were defined for 8, 16, and 32 bit items. _Every_ other integer type was defined as a subtype of one of those. Totally eliminated integer type conflicts--and checking. - In several packages record type definitions were defined using the C idiom for struct definitions, to the point of having the term "struct" as part of the type name, AND defining a subtype of the record for public use--ala the practice of having a typedef for struct definitions. - Handling message buffers by interfacing to the strcpy() function and using it to move bytes from memory buffer arrays to and from record components. - Used tasks where virtually all the work of the task was performed during task rendezvous, _including_ making entry calls on other tasks. This resulted in the world's most computationally expensive procedure calls. Clearly there were no experienced Ada hands on the project, and it showed. -- Marc A. Criley -- McKae Technologies -- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out