Re: Future with Ada

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:

> 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". ...
>
> 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 ;-)

This goes to the heart of one of Ada's benefits, not one of its
liabilities.   In C/C++ a programmer can write code that
compiles and seems just fine until one day it explodes
quite unexpectedly.     Also,  "The Devil is in the details,"
to coin an completely new an wonderful expression.  :)

At first, it seems so easy to create C++ code.  Then, as one
gets deeper and deeper into the process,  "The Devil"
begins to emerge from the Hades populated by "friends,"
copy constructors, destructors, unhappy pointers, and the
host of other little creatures of that realm.

This is not to say that C++ is inherently evil.   The really
experienced C++ programmer can easily tame this collection
of Mephistophelian gargoyles, but the new C++ programmer
can be easily led astray.    The same is true with a new Ada
programmer.  We simply do not want newbies doing the
critical design in a brand-new language regardless of how
good that language might be.

The benefit of Ada is that newbies are prevented, due to the
Draconian constraints of the language, from making the same
number of mistakes they might make as a newbie in C++.
However, it would be foolish to believe they cannot make
mistakes of the same magnitude simply because of those
constraints.

I believe that, in the long run, Ada is a better language, but
newcomers to any language need a lot of adult supervision.

Richard Riehle