Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

["Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>]

Michael Levasseur wrote:
> I'll cover these one by one:
> COTS - These movement to COTS hass been including move and
> more code that has been written in C++ as well 4GL stuff.
> Forgetting the wisdom of using COTS on DoD software, interfacing
> Ada to C is farely painless. Interfacing Ada to 4GL, commercial
> applications, C++ or JAVA are all a major undertaking.

I have recently been directly involved in a DoD effort using large
amounts of COTS hardware and software, and interfacing Ada to it has 
literally been the LEAST of our problems. Writing Ada bindings, even
high level ones, is really not all that difficult for an experienced
Ada developer. There are even some tools available to do it for you.
Getting COTS hardware/software combinations that will work 
together, now THAT has been a nightmare!

> The loss of credible compiler companies - As the number of credible
> compiler companies shinks and DoD software budgets continue to
> shink getting a vendor for the particular platform are harder and
> also more expensive.

I have seen neither of these. I suppose it depends on your 
definition of "credible". The major players, Alsys and Rational seem
to be getting stonger than ever. And the last few months have seen
the emergence of ACT.

The platform I am currently using is now supported by no less than
4 different Ada vendors. When I started 6 months ago, that number 
was 2! I guess you are seeing different trends than I am.

I have also not noticed a large upward movement in prices. Either
way, the price of our Ada compiler roughly in line with, and in 
many cases less than the price of all our COTS software.

In any event, you can now get an Ada compile for FREE.

>                      Ada has not and probably never will overcome
> the stigma of being developed by the Government.

That is perhaps true. I find it odd that this stigma would apply
within the DoD, though.

> I've been programming in Ada and C for the last 10 years. I
> personally believe that Ada is better for software development.
> More maintainable, better information hiding and encapsulation.
> Unfortunately, the economics law called "the law of diminishing
> returns" this law basically says that the old saying
> "if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to
> your door" is incorrect. Although Ada is better, C and C++ will
> probably be the winner. Remember Beta vs. VHS or IBM vs. MAC.

In my experience, C or FORTRAN are usually pushed the strongest 
by high-level engineers who have never used Ada much, and don't 
see any good reason to change from "their" language. They will
use ANY argument handy to justify this. As time goes by I am
starting to see some engineers who have good Ada experience
promoted into these these positions, and am seeing more jobs
proposed in Ada.

So my outlook is a bit more optimistic than yours...but I'm 
learning Java, just in case. :-)

-- 
T.E.D.          
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