Re: Mainstream Ada

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

Larry Kilgallen wrote:

> So it is not that developers who choose Ada need to forgo features.
> Rather, it is that developers who choose features over quality
> have no particular incentive to choose Ada.  Those nasty checks
> will get in the way of time-to-market.
> 


I would state this a little bit differently.
Those nasty checks are perceived to get in the way of time-to-market.

My personal experience is that those nasty checks improve
time-to-market by catching a lot of critical errors very early
in the development cycle.

I have told this story before in this forum, but I will repeat it
here.

My previous job put me in the position of software lead in a small
privately held company doing robotics work. I hired in two more
software engineers to complete the software development team.
We were developing a robotic control system under a contract to the
US Army. We were also tasked to be the first shop in the world to
implement the Army's Joint Architecture for Unmanned Ground
Systems (JAUGS). Our company chose Ada.

I was able to hire two highly experienced Ada software engineers.
One had 15 years experience developing software to control radar
systems for the US Air Force. The other had 10 years experience
developing jet engine control software for Pratt and Whitney.

The three of us took the project from initial requirements through
final qualification tests in two years, producing 200K SLOC.
This project was subject to normal DoD processes including design
reviews by the customer, and copious formal documentation.

During the same period I was our company representative on the
JAUGS Working Group, refining the JAUGS architecture. Other
members of the working group came from industry (i.e. Boeing and
SAIC and others), Government (i.e. US Navy, Department of Energy,
National Institute of Standards and Testing, Army Missile Command),
and academia (i.e. University of Florida). All the other members
of the working group were using C++ to develop their own systems.
All the other groups had much larger development teams than my
company. We were the only group that produced an entirely new
system from the beginning. All the other groups managed to add
one or two features to their existing platforms in the same
time period.

I am convinced we could not have achieved the same level of
productivity in the robotics domain using any other language.

What ever happened to that robotic system?

The owner of the company became blinded by his own narcissism.
He laid off the entire software team just before the Army
accepted the project. The Army was shocked by this behavior and
pulled the contract from the company. The company has gone from
about 75 people to about 4 people since then.


Jim Rogers