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=2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,63ceef1cf4561e32 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Joseph C Williams Subject: Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope? Date: 2000/07/20 Message-ID: <39772BA6.F72AC7FB@raytheon.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 648672164 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <8l01s4$gnr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <39748F35.72CBC45A@averstar.com> <39749211.1A6ADC0A@raytheon.com> <39749DA3.CC4471DD@computermotion.com> <3974D0B3.1DEBD825@raytheon.com> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Raytheon Aerospace Engineering Services - Systems & Models Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: joseph_c_williams@raytheon.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-07-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Stanley R. Allen" wrote: > > but at least a couple (surprise, > surprise) used to be programmers. The head of my department used > to teach Ada at the local university. Another supervisor was a > member of the Posix/Ada mapping review group. Another likes to > get his hands dirty with GNAT/Linux in his spare time. > > Heck, one day even *you* might become a manager, like some > other people that read this group regularly. To give Stanley credit (and I do that a lot), he is right. Ada is intended to be used on 'reasonably' sized projects... stuff that is not done in a week or two....stuff that can take years to finally deploy. This long lead time is not due to Ada, but to the nature of the problems being solved (heck, the NEXT space station we build will not be like this...). This means that some of today's floor engineers may someday be tomorrow's team/group/IPT leads, maybe even work up to upper management someday. All while still working on the exact same project or something very similar. You (hopefully) end up with a lot of corporate knowledge walking around in the leadership ranks. Your 1991 new-grad screwup may be your 2001 department manager. Agreeably, some of them still are mentally fighting the battles of yesteryear. But surprisingly, the same problems still are applicable today: CM issues, multiple baselines, memory constraints, timing constraints, race conditions, plain bad code, short schedules, employee burnout, customer expectations, etc. etc. etc. Of course, everyone has employee turnover and such. But with a 'good' Ada project, I think your leadership ranks' average technical skill base will tend to increase over time. They will have a certain sense of ownership in the project and a personal knowledge of its history, both successes and failures. You probably would not see this on a short-term C/C++ project. -- ---------------------------------------------- Joe Williams Aerospace Engineering Services, RAYTHEON TECHNICAL SERVICES COMPANY Joseph_C_Williams@Raytheon.com