Re: Future with Ada

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

Jim Rogers wrote:

> Michael Card wrote:
>> I was wondering why it is perceived as undesirable to train new
>> programmers in Ada? Certainly hiring an experienced S/W engineer who
>> has only done C++ or Java, for example, would not require a significant
>> additional investment to train them in Ada? If teh language really
>> offers benefits, wouldn't those benefits more than offset the
>> relatively small cost of buying 2-3 weeks of intense Ada training for
>> the programmers?
> 
> I agree. I have found good C++ programmers to be trainable.
> I watched one pick up the basics of Ada in about 2 weeks with the
> help of "Ada as a Second Language". ...


While I can only speak about my own experience here (ie. learning
Ada95), I would suggest that picking up the language in about 2 weeks
is about right.. but...

I found it took a while longer before I could properly
design applications from scratch in Ada95. This is because the
entire framework is considerably different than C/C++ from a
number of viewpoints, most notably from a visibility point of
view, not to mention standard packages et. al.

Ada's package design, its restrictions on visibility etc., can
lead to a lot of head-scratching to a C/C++ designer.
In C/C++ I was always able to obtain pointers to something,
declare a new friend function, whatever. Ada requires you to
more carefully think about all these relationships before hand,
or you wind up moving/rewriting parts of your application
later as you get those "you can't get there from here" messages
from your favourite Ada compiler.

In this regard, I think somewhere between 3 months to a year
is required in order to gain the sufficient level of experience
to get it nearly right the first time. Even then, I believe
that the new Ada programmer still gets burned on what can
and cannot be done (in a given way) with generics for example.

The language is large enough that it takes time to gain enough
experience with all of these elements. For example, just the
"use" clause is hotly debated as to how and when
it should be used. I am still tinkering with how I want to
use "use", even though some advise against using it at all.
A new user of it is likely to abuse it, only to learn from
that lesson later on. ;-)

So while I agree that an experienced programmer can quickly
embrace Ada and *maintain* existing code, I do believe you
want someone with a bit more experience if he is designing
major subsystems from scratch. Otherwise, you'll have to
allow time for that programmer more time to learn from
his mistakes ;-)

Just my $0.02 worth.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg