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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,d8e86e1b9bb29940 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:03:13 -0600 Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:58:33 -0500 From: Jeffrey Creem User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (Windows/20061207) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada downsizing in space References: <2007021717413416807-rblove@airmailnet> In-Reply-To: <2007021717413416807-rblove@airmailnet> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <366ma4-3m6.ln1@newserver.thecreems.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.147.74.171 X-Trace: sv3-L6RtYQDwLtKsciqLuSFYe9mOdQwMtoRphGCU7mWlSZqu1zjlF19MfpgxJrrKZeGf7bXHeLCeQ1d5/Re!V9pv3FB/XkUTJbjZEFsD8iJi/Cgn8KRfyb226LoZZ57VICc0BaTyy/x09swge3V8yZXinmTwOtb4!Yko= X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca@comcast.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:9357 Date: 2007-02-18T09:58:33-05:00 List-Id: 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.