Re: Ada downsizing in space

[Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com>]

R. B. Love wrote:
> It was very pleasant reading the recent thread about "Ada is popular 
> after all" but local events make me think other wise.
> 
> I have to believe that the International Space Station (ISS) was one of 
> the biggest Ada projects in the world, employing people in several 
> nations writing Ada.  NASA has decreed that there must be a 15% 
> reduction in spending on ISS and Boeing responded Friday with layoff 
> notices going to between 140 and 180 people.  A good many of them are 
> Ada programmers.


Do you have first hand knowledge that ISS has a lot of Ada. NASA appears 
to have abandoned Ada around 10 years ago (That is not to say that 
nothing was being done in Ada -- just most high visibility things that 
you'd hear about were not done in Ada). I think it was part of their 
Better, Faster, Cheaper (Choose any 0 of them) plan.

> 
> All the work I see being done for CEV is C or C++.  LockMart, the same 
> people who spiked Ada for with the Secretary of the Air Force on SBIRS, 
> seems determined to make everything C++.

Sounds about right http://www.defense-aerospace.com/produit/40968_us.html

> 
> Now some of us will be employed for years maintaining existing ISS 
> code.  The transition from development to maintanence had to come someday.
> 
> It would be very interesting to hear about new, large Ada projects 
> anywhere.   Does someone still maintain a list?
> 

The old list stopped being updated.
Boeing appears to at least maintain some interest in Ada as the C-130 
and 7E7 announcements indicate.

Since Ada is no longer "buzzword compliant" I don't think (most) people 
using it are really into press release engineering anymore.


> If anyone is hiring Ada programmers, I expect your recruiting dollars 
> would go far  in Houston.
> 

We almost never hire "Ada" programmers even for Ada jobs. It is true 
that someone who is a great software engineer and knows Ada really well 
is a great asset to have on a project but in general, I tend to care 
more about finding great software engineers (which are hard to find) 
more than finding someone that worked someplace where they used Ada 
(which is not as hard to find as people think).

Of course if starting a new team on a new project, it would be a mistake 
to not have a few people with a solid Ada background.