Re: Boeing and Dreamliner

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Richard Riehle wrote:
> "Robert I. Eachus" wrote:
>>But to me the crowning idiocy of the whole thing is in one sentence of
>>the report: "The main explanation for the absence of this test has
>>already been mentioned above, i.e. the SRI specification (which is
>>supposed to be a requirements document for the SRI) does not contain the
>>Ariane 5 trajectory data as a functional requirement."
> 
> Since this discussion began as a dialogue about the Boeing 7E7, and someone
> raised the question of whether C++ would be appropriate for software on
> that aircraft, the lesson of Ariane 5 is important for the engineers.
...
> I have trained engineers to program in Ada and they take to it well and
> understand
> the underlying rationale for its design.   I have trained C++ programmers and
> many
> of the spend their time arguing about how they can do such-and-such in C++ and
> why can't they do it that way in Ada.     
...
> Richard Riehle

This experience once again demonstrates that mantra "skills are
trainable, but _attitudes_ are not."

Many younger folk seem to think their skillset is their most
marketable asset. This is perhaps true for contractors.

But for fulltime staff, companies want the right attitude, which
is very difficult, if not impossible to change. Skills OTOH, can
be provided through training and experience.

This seems to extend into the use of Ada, as Richard just demonstrated.
People can be trained to use Ada (adopting the right attitude), vs
changing the attitude of skilled C/C++ (adopting the language Ada).

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