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From: Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Joint Strike Fighter
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 20:46:16 -0800
Organization: AdaWorks Software Engineering
Message-ID: <3BE0D398.55DE833@adaworks.com>
References: <3BDCE159.39F6D422@adaworks.com> <3BDD9800.F922885A@lmco.com>
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Date: 2001-11-01T04:42:06+00:00
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Paul A Storm wrote:

> Richard Riehle wrote:
>
> > Now that LMCO has been awarded the contract for
> > JSF, does anyone know if the original plan to do the
> > software in Ada remains unchanged?
> >
> > Richard Riehle
>
> Ada use is alive and well here at LMCO.

Paul. Yes, I know that many well-informed managers continue
to select Ada for their projects.    I have had the pleasure of working
with many of those managers and their people.   In fact, the quality
of LMCO software people, in my experience, has been exceptional
and gratifying.

Of course, in any organization, there are many different criteria used
in decision-making process.   We must be fair and assume that the
criteria used to select C++ for certain projects was carefully
considered
and seriously taken.

The concern among those in this forum is, I hope, that the best
decisions
are being taken with regard to the safety-critical software being
developed
for DoD weapon systems.  I have no doubt of the sincerity and commitment

of those making the decisions.    However, some in this forum seem to
suggest that factors such as resume enhancement play too great a role in

the final decision.   One would hope that is not the case, and most of
the
LMCO managers that I know are wiser than that.

We need to beware of letting our biases in favor of Ada influence our
opinions about people we don't know, and realize that our skepticism
is, for the most part, conjecture that follows from those biases.   I
admit
that I am all too often guilty of this myself.  No responsible manager
is
going to let anything but the quality of the end product determine what
tools and processes to select in building that product.   That being
said,
I believe the vast majority of managers at LMCO are responsible and
concientious people.   The language decision for JSF will have had
a lot of input from a lot of informed people.    Also, those at LMCO
I have talked with are committed to quality products regardless of
what language is used for the coding.

Yes, it is disappointing when we learn that Ada was pre-empted by
C++.  Yes, we in this forum believe Ada is superior to C++ for the
building of weapon systems.    No, language selection is not an exact
science.    Reasonable people disagree all the time about this issue.

Richard Riehle