Re: Was: Re: Ada95 in Germany

[rracine@myremarq.com (Roger Racine)]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2000 11:11:59 -0800, "Marin D. Condic"
<mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com> wrote:

>Charles H. Sampson wrote:
>>      I think you're referring to the failed attempt a few years ago to
>> develop a new air traffic control system for the U. S.  A division of my
>> company was the software subcontractor for the project, which was large-
>> ly in Ada.  It's my understanding that when the project was shut down,
>> the manager (from the prime contractor, another company) volunteered
>> that the choice of programming language was not the cause.  I'm writing
>> from memory of informal chats with colleagues 3000 miles away, but, from
>> what I heard, it was a classic case of not stabilizing requirements.
>> 
>That sounds like the one. I know there were some Ada-bigots out there
>who wanted to blame the language, but realistically speaking, project
>failure (like business failure) is prima facie evidence of bad
>management.
>

The language has been at least a part of numerous problem programs (if
not failures, then cost overruns) that I know about, in many
languages.  For Ada, the problems have come about when the team tries
to over-design the system.  Ada has many wonderful features, such as
tasking, tagged types, etc.  However, if over-used (how about 10
levels of inheritance, tasks used essentially as procedures, . . .;
not the real problems to protect the innocent) on what was thought at
the time to be a fast processor (68010, 80386 DX), these features can
be time hogs.  

Of course the real problem was with the people, not the language.  But
we Ada lovers tend to say that Ada helps prevent problems.
Unfortunately there are people who love abstraction, and abstraction
can be a problem if used badly.

Please understand that I could easily give many examples of problems
with C or C++ programs, but that is not part of this thread.  My only
point is that there are people who like low-level languages (i.e. C)
because it is less abstract (similar to people who like assembly
language) and therefore easier to estimate performance.

Roger Racine