Re: Joint Strike Fighter

[john.mccabe@emrad.com.nospam (John McCabe)]

On 1 Nov 2001 03:38:12 -0800, ian0kerr@my-deja.com (Ian) wrote:

>Working currently on the VSTOL predecessor of JSF I don't find
>anything that we need from Ada and the available tools that C++ would
>provide.

I'm confused by this comment, can you please explain it in slightly
different words?

> Our process,(on a different project) is described in FULL in:
>
>GENESYS An Application of OO technology to Aircraft Display Systems,
>Neil Davidson, BAE Systems Avionics Ltd, Presented in Symposium on
>Reliable Object Orientated Programming, at Institution of Electrical
>Engineers, Savoy Place, London, 24th October 2001.

Wow - I Had no idea there was a process in place in your department.

>Except we use a substitute for Labview. We don't have a problem
>recruiting Ada experienced software engineers and then practically
>everyone who wants it gets training.

Are you sure? Even permanent ones? I thought BAE *and* AeI were having
problems recruiting good, permanent Ada engineers because:

1) They don't pay enough
2) Many people don't want to do Ada!

>I have done courses on
>statecharts, UML, UML to Ada95 code generation, Test instrumentation
>tools for Ada and  Ada95 updates.

That's good - we never got *any* training on the rig team!

>I don't think it is that difficult to do avionics in Ada95 if you
>already know C++ properly, (assuming some knowledge of SW Engineering
>principles).

That depends on how flexible you are, and how much OO you want to use.
Looking at it the other way, I don't think it would be difficult to do
avionics in C++ if you already know Ada properly - and it will
certainly be more reliable if you have to use C++, to use Ada trained
developers to do the job than those who have only ever used C/C++
based languages!