Re: Choose Ada flyer

[munck@Mill-Creek-Systems.com (Bob Munck)]

On Mon, 14 Dec 1998 15:29:14 -0800, Paul Whittington <paul@grep.net>
wrote:

>I don't know exactly what the purpose of this material is, but it leaves
>me with the impression that Ada is the right choice for large or safety
>critical applications.
>
>It seems to me that the majority of software being written today falls
>into the non-safety critical category, and the sponsors/developers do
>not identify what they're doing as a "large" project.

Maybe the point should be made that programs may be critical to
the safety (continued profitiability) of a company.   A typical
scenario today is that a few people in a start-up create a medium-
sized app, 100K LoC or so, in a hurry with no coding standards,
process, specification, etc.  If the app is a success, the company
adds to it and adds to it, with occasional local restructuring, until
it is a huge mess.  At some point, the level of bugs, inconsistencies,
redundancies, and interdependencies can become so high that
the product essentially dies.  It has been said that this has happened
to Lotus, Borland, and Netscape.

Ada doesn't solve these problems, of course, but we all believe
that it can ameliorate them.  If only we could get Ada to be used
in those garage start-ups originally.


>IMHO, any software worth writing is large enough to warrant the use of 
>Ada.

You know that, and I know that.  (But why aren't we rich?)

Bob Munck