Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson)]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong
> typing, but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists
> bugs and errors. Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last
> several months learning Ada to a professional level, in the way that my
> current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.
> 
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did
> you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and
> move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
> 
> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love
> to chat about it.

The last 20 or so years of my career, I worked in nothing but Ada. It
was three implementation projects, maybe more, and a lot of language
instruction.

I tried to end my career without ever having written any C. Alas, I was
forced toward the end to write one 6-line C program. I had tried to
interface our Ada code to an operating system function for a Unix-link
OS. With the C code I was able to show that the function was badly
implemented; my interface code was good.

Incidentally, the last project I worked on was a massively parallel Navy
system (over 160 tasks). As I retired, the Navy had let a contract for
the follow-on system. It would use a lot of our code (no reinventing the
wheel - good) but the first thing that would be done is to convert our
Ada code to C++.

Charlie
-- 
Nobody in this country got rich on his own.  You built a factory--good.
But you moved your goods on roads we all paid for.  You hired workers we
all paid to educate. So keep a big hunk of the money from your factory.
But take a hunk and pay it forward.  Elizabeth Warren (paraphrased)