Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope?

[Rennie Allen <rallen@computermotion.com>]

nabbasi@pacbell.net.NOSPAM wrote:

> The more I work in the software industry, the more I am amazed on how
> much time is wasted by not using the better tool for the job.

Tell me about it.
 
> As others said, any programmer worth half his salary should be able to
> learn Ada in few days, and become good enough at it in few short weeks.

Here I think you are exaggerating a bit (well it depends on what you consider
"good enough").  I really don't think that many programmers can be reasonably
expected to employ all the features of Ada that make it valuable, after only a
"few short weeks".  I think that reasonable competency (which I define as a Ada
expert not having to hand hold the trainee through a complete design to
implementation phase) can be achieved in around 6 months.  The point is if you
are doing a large software project, one can reasonably expect that 6
months/developer is equivalent to the time one will spend fixing bugs that would
not have made it into the runtime using Ada.  The real question is what is your
endpoint.  If you are prepared to ship buggy products (as many companies seem
prepared to do) then the 6 months doesn't pay off (since you reach your endpoint
- shipping buggy code - effectively without resorting to Ada).

-- 
To succeed in this world it is not enough to be stupid; you must also be
well-mannered. - Voltaire