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=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8264dac98bc604d8,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-11 11:35:55 PST Path: sparky!uunet!decwrl!purdue!haven.umd.edu!news.umbc.edu!nobody From: berman@umbc.edu (Mike Berman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: The actual quote from the Post AAS article Date: 11 Mar 1993 14:21:15 -0500 Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County Campus Distribution: world Message-ID: <1no3fbINN3h7@umbc4.umbc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: umbc4.umbc.edu Date: 1993-03-11T14:21:15-05:00 List-Id: 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 ..."?!? The majority of the article talks of enormous requirements documentation, high reliability requirements ("The FAA wanted extreme reliability in the network. 'The system has to be up and available for all but three seconds a year,' [IBM Federal Systems chairman] Ebker said."), continually changing requirements, lack of testing, management problems ("Middle-level IBM managers began on their own authority to circumvent formal practices by which software is vetted within the company before being allowed into use, Ebker said. 'The problem is key individuals in key slots who didn't do their jobs'), and lack of adeequate software tools. The article is pretty straightforward in placing "blame" on all factors taken in toto, not representing IBM's failures as failure due to the use of Ada. In fact, it appears that the article's author knows little about the language (or software engineering, or even programming, for that matter). Let's face it, the "exotic" features of the language are the same or less exotic than the features found in OOP languages. 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. -- Mike Berman University of Maryland, Baltimore County Fastrak Training, Inc. berman@umbc.edu (301)924-0050