Re: Was: Re: Ada95 in Germany

["Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com>]

Tapio F. Marjom�ki wrote:
> There hangs all the time a cloak of secrecy over the Ada projects (if there
> are any), maybe it is due to the military background of Ada. All the
> postings concerning this issue are so laconic, that no one can get
> conception how large is the project, what is the expected result (product)
> and is it going to be obtained, what  kind of mixture of programming
> languages are used and so on.
> 
Large scale, mission critical software developments (where Ada excels
and is used quite a bit) don't get the attention of something like
Netscape (which crashes incessantly!) or Windows98 (which also crashes
incessantly!) because they are not for sale to the masses. I've worked
on lots of large Ada developments. I've seen or heard of many more.
Check out some of the web sites that talk about Ada and I'm sure you
will find out about them too. Its not that it isn't used. It is just not
used in highly visible applications. (Although I think Netscape and
Windows would be better products if it *was* used there! ;-)

> A few will stand forth and say I (we) did it in Ada, nobody says we tried to
> do in Ada but  failed (I think there are some).
> 
I had heard tell of some project the FAA was doing in Ada which failed
(as does my aging memory!). However, project failure is often more an
issue of bad planning and management than it is the language of
implementation. I think the Denver Airport had a baggage handling system
written in C or C++ which was a flop, but as much as I'd like to blame
it on C, I'd be reasonably sure that a better software process could
have made it a success. If the development team understands their tools
and the limitations thereof, they can plan for the weaknesses and insure
success. I know of no project failures in Ada or any other language that
could not have been avoided with a sound process.

> In my own case (I do not speak for my company) I would say it is too risky
> to stay away from the mainstream. First I should have a strong evidence done
> by me or associates, until I could convince my superiors, but I can't do
> that evidence without a fairly complete set of Ada tools and support
> (expensive) or without spending my working hours, for which  I don't have
> acceptance of my superiors...
> 
Depends on what you are doing. There are plenty of Ada tools and support
available and choosing to use Ada often limits project risks. However,
there are problem domains that are better suited to the tools available
in another language and then that language becomes the better choice.
I'd say that most of the issue revolves around how much understanding
the developers have of the language and tools. Diving into a major
project while saying "Hey! Let's do it in Ada." without providing any
time/budget to get the developers up to speed on how to do it right is a
really good recepie for failure. (It would be in any other language as
well.) If you don't learn to use the language, you can't derive the
benefits that come with it either.

My suggestion is that if you think your project would benefit from Ada's
features, then find at least one or two developers with considerable
experience using it. Let them push the design and guide the other
developers in how to use Ada properly. It also doesn't hurt to send the
developers to a class and get them some books as well. Its necessary to
do this with anything new and is an up-front investment in risk
mitigation and back-end productivity.

If you want to make a business case for using Ada, look for articles and
links at: http://www.AdaPower.com/ I've seen a number of presentations
and had much personal experience collecting metrics which demonstrate
Ada increases productivity and reduces error rates.

Or you could let your competitors adopt the technology and gain a
competitive advantage... :-)

MDC
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Marin David Condic   - Quadrus Corporation -   1.800.555.3393
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        --  Allan Meltzer, Economist 
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