Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation

["Stanley R. Allen" <s_allen@hso.link.com>]

Bill Nielsen wrote:
> 
> After following up on a post I made last week ("Future of the Ada mandate")
> talking to  program managers involved DoD procurements, one thing is clear:
> The Ada mandate (which is written into law) is being widely ignored. In
> most cases, waivers are not even sought. This includes not just R&D
> software, but fieldable operational software that supports military
> missions for which Ada is expressly designed.
> 

From where I sit, it looks like Bill & Gregory are
right about the DoD.

My company's job is building big simulators, and the
new DoD *mandate* (sound familiar?) for simulations is
called HLA (High Level Architecture), which is being
developed by the Defense Modeling and Simulation
Office (DMSO)  See http://www.dmso.mil/projects/hla/
for some interesting overview and mandate stuff.

It's a good idea. It's time has come.  But the first
cut of the HLA API is given in .... C++ !  No mention
of Ada anywhere.  No justification is given for
avoiding the Ada madate.  And HLA is a *big* *deal*.
All the major DoD simulator contractors are hankering
after this work. 

So, two DoD mandates mitigate against one another.
(Homework: ask yourself seriously which one will win.)
Note that HLA-compliance for simulators must be
considered new development; there is no such thing
as a COTS HLA-based system.  It's too new.  So, the
COTS excuse is no reason.

C++ is still not ISO standardized, but many in the C++
community expect that it will be either this year or
early next.  When this happens, the DoD Ada mandate 
will lose one of its most important contentions --
that Ada is the best choice because of its inter-
national standardization, which no other OO language
currently has.

C++ still seems like a hoax.  Every other article or
book I read about C++ (written by members of the C++
community!) decries the complexity of the language,
how hard it is to maintain, how many "gotcha's" there
are, how difficult it is to build large systems which
don't have pathological dependency and fragility
problems, etc.

If you are a DoD Ada programmer, this could be your
future.  And don't kid yourself into thinking that Java
will be much better.  Java was designed for small
"applets" (the diminutive of "applications"); the Java
code I have seen so far isn't much of an advance in
readability over C++.  And the mindset of the two
language cultures is the same.  I shudder to think
of what a large system in Java will look like.

Imagine the Boeing 777 in C++ or Java.  I wouldn't
want to ride in it.

If you believe in the promise of Ada (as I do), you
could do yourself a favor by listening to Gregory
Aharonian.  And then doing something about it.


-- 
Stanley Allen
s_allen@hso.link.com
(713) 280-4445
-- my opinions only