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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3ccb707f4c91a5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Stanley R. Allen" Subject: Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation Date: 1996/10/09 Message-ID: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 188280753 references: <01bbb57f$7fb59020$72663389@billn.logicon.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: NASA/Johnson Space Center mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; IRIX 5.3 IP19) Date: 1996-10-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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