Re: Is the Ada World Embarrassed by the Defense Industry?

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

"E. Robert Tisdale" wrote:
> 
> 
> It is possible to implement reliable applications
> in other programming languages through diligence,
> discipline and exhaustive testing.  It just costs more.
> One can only assume that the commercial developer
> weighed these costs against all of the other costs
> relevant to application program development when
> they decided which programming language(s) to use.

Nice sentiment, but my experience tells me this is nonesense.

I am currently involved in teaching software skills to software
professionals. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any
customers wanting to learn Ada. I have found a number of customers
wanting to learn Java. The most curious group of these customers
are the ones wanting to convert all their legacy COBOL code to Java.

Such decisions are not being made by the people who understand the
legacy code. They are being made by management who want to feel like
they are keeping up with the times. All their friends in other companies
are using Java. That is all the reason they need. After that, they
hire some Java consultants, who naturally say that Java is the only
language worth using for ANY purpose. With such a glowing
recommendation,
the management team feels fully justified in their decision to switch
to Java.

After making the decision they sometimes ask what performance gains they
will see. The answer is always that they will see significant
performance
losses using Java. Ah well, I guess that is the price of keeping up with
your peers.

> 
> The problem for the military
> is to test and evaluate all of these applications
> and select the best value.
> 
> If application program source codes are transferred
> to the military, they must find and/or train programmers
> to modify and maintain that source code.
> It is easier to find and train C and C++ programmers
> than it is to find and train Ada programmers today
> so there is a strong incentive to prefer C or C++ over Ada.

This is also nonesense. It is easier to find C and C++ programmers
than Ada programmers. It is definitely NOT easier to train C and
C++ programmers than Ada programmers.

Among other things, you must train C and C++ programmers to avoid the
numerous dangerous features of the language, particularly when
developing
real-time system. You can spend less time teaching Ada, without multiple
class hours spent on avoiding dangerous language features.

If you want to spend the same amount of time teaching Ada, you can teach
the real-time aspects of synchronous and asynchronous tasking. These
subjects are NEVER taught in C and C++ courses. They are occasionally
taught
as SEPARATE COURSES for those C and C++ developers who want to explore
the
strange domain of concurrent systems.

> 
> A lot can be done to incorporate safety and reliability
> into C and C++ compilers and class libraries
> but these languages are inherently unsafe
> and there is very little that can be done about it
> without changing the languages themselves.

Exactly.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado