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=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7bcba1db9ed24fa7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-07 18:10:44 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!news-out.worldnet.att.net.MISMATCH!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!135.173.83.71!wnfilter1!worldnet-localpost!bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3B47B3A2.7E239D01@worldnet.att.net> From: James Rogers X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: is ada dead? References: <3B460DA9.C2965042@ix.netcom.com> <9ff447f2.0107061757.34ca0723@posting.google.com> <3b47806a_4@news3.prserv.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 01:10:44 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.86.32.97 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 994554644 12.86.32.97 (Sun, 08 Jul 2001 01:10:44 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 01:10:44 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9622 Date: 2001-07-08T01:10:44+00:00 List-Id: Andrzej Lewandowski wrote: > > You are in a good society. I was once teaching Real Time Programming and was > using Ada. This was at not that bad U.S. University. Once, after the end of semester > students brought to the Dean collection of Classified from local newspapers and > asked him to find at least one job as that would require Ada. Dean was smart enough > to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was > smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C. Do you really believe that a student graduating from an American University with a CS degree and no professional experience is ready to be employed as a software engineer? I do not. Many companies I have worked for do not. The one company most willing to hire new graduates insisted that the new graduates could not be considered software engineers until completing one year on the job, and that year was spent under the close supervision of an experienced software engineer. If, at any time, the new graduate did not appear to be progressing properly, he or she could be terminated with no excuse or warning. Other companies I have worked for are less enthusiastic about hiring new graduates. They typically want three to five years experience on an applicant's resume or cv before even considering that job applicant. > This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada > programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL. > Students invest quite substantial amount of money to get a degree, and yes, they > expect that this investment will bring some return. Generally, there is little room > to study for "scientific pleasure". They are studying to get skills that will position > them well on the job market. They will not learn Ada just this is a "better language". > They will study the language that is visible on the market. They study the language most visible in the job postings. That, of course does not mean that those students will graduate with even a shadow of the experience needed to perform the positions offered. If those students look more closely they will see that the positions advertised all, or mostly all, contain experience requirements. Studying a language does not help. My experience is that companies that do hire new graduates expect them to have some understanding of the basic concepts of software development. They also expect to need to train those new graduates in the processes, tools, and product domains concerning the hiring company. This often includes training the new graduate in the language used by the company. This training takes about the same amount of time and effort whether or not the graduate "learned" the language in the University classroom. The theory used by the students is that University training and experience really counts. In reality it does not. It is easy for a university to support this fantasy by chasing the current software language fad. The university can avoid a lot of meetings with upset students. Back in the early days of civilization, when I went through a University education, I was fed a diet of concepts such as academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and the need for a deep and broad education. It appears that many universities have given up on those ideals. Instead, they have become that which they used to despise. They have become institutions that produce people with narrow, and largely useless, educations, instead of well and broadly educated people ready to build and lead their civilizations and cultures. > What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost > of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say, > Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure > of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop > one zero from their price list. This is now, and always has been, a vacuous argument. Look at the cost of a professional C development environment. You need a C compiler. You need an editor. You need a build tool such as the Unix make program. You need a debugger. You need a syntax checking tool such as lint. You need a configuration management tool. You need a run-time profiling tool, to identify little errors such as memory leaks and array bounds violations. What do you need for an Ada development environment? You need an Ada compiler (which contains a very good syntax checker, an editing system, and often a configuration management system). You may need a debugger. The cost of a C language development system often exceeds the cost of an Ada development system. The real problem is that most companies have no idea how much their software costs. Most companies have very weak software processes with few or no meaningful software metrics. That is why most company's software processes evaluate to CMM level 1. That is why a large percentage of software development projects in the commercial world are cancelled before their release date, even after the expenditure of the equivalent of greater than 10**6 Dollars. Companies with proper software development processes understand that tool costs are irrelevant. Project and product failures are the real expense. Jim Rogers Colorado Springs, Colorado USA