Re: Ada student homework ?

[Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com>]

Nicolas Brunot wrote:

> Concerning the use of Ada, just pick up some papers about software development, and count the
> words :
>              C, Fortran, Cobol, Java and Ada ...etc ...
>
> Do you know that some companies gave up Ada because the difficulties and costs to maintain a team
> of Ada programmers ruined the benefits of the language itself ?

HmmmMMMMMmmmm.    Are you suggesting that the "cost to maintain a team
of Ada programmers"  is a function of the language?      The final part of your
sentence leads me to suspect you understand the benefits of Ada.   The stupidity
of many program managers, especially some in the DoD, regarding Ada is not
the fault of the language.    The preference to build a resume with a more
commercial flavor (e.g., the C family of languages) is not the fault of Ada.

I am currently watching with amusement as hordes of otherwise intelligent
programmers are forced to learn C++, when Ada is already in place.  One
prominent member of the DoD software community said to me recently, "We have
all this legacy Ada code that we need to port to Java technology."   He is
making his decision on the recommendation of someone who, in my opinion,
is not experienced enough in Ada or C++ to make such a judgement.   Another
said, "In my last command they told me that Ada was pretty much dead since
the mandate went away."

Meanwhile, C++, a language which can best be characterized as "its own
virus,"  is being stuffed down the intellectual maw of a lot of programmers
who already know Ada 83 and need only to be updated on the technology
of the current standard.   Transitioning good Ada to C++ is so silly that it
defies belief.

The result will be more incidents such as the USS Yorktown, dead in the water
from a software flaw originating in code written in C.    I find it scary that we
plan to send our young men into battle depending on software created with the
most error-prone programming language ever invented. Who will take the final
responsibility for this folly once the finger-pointing begins?

Richard Riehle