Re: POLL: Would you use Ada more if...

[john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk (John McCabe)]

On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 18:00:52 GMT, Robert A Duff
<bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:

>john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk (John McCabe) writes:
>
>> Ah, but then the manager with some vague [odd] idea of software comes
>> in and says "If it doesn't cost anything, it can't be any good" :-)
>
>That reminds me of a talk I heard some years ago, given by a guy from
>NASA.  He was talking about the software for the Apollo program.  They
>had weight budgets for all the pieces of the rocket -- obviously you
>want to make the thing as light as possible if you're launching it into
>space.  So the manager asked the software guy how much the software
>would weigh.  He said software doesn't weigh anything.  The manager said
>come on, these weight budgets are very important, even if it's not much,
>every ounce counts.  The software guy tried in vain to convince the
>manager that the weight of software really is zero.  Eventually the
>software guy showed the manager a deck of punch cards, and said, See the
>holes?  That's the software.  Then the manager understood.

Amusing, as long as you don't consider the storage medium for the
software. Point being, if you write an app that's 200MBytes, you're
going to need shit-loads more storage than one that's 2kBytes, and
storage uses mass. Can't say anyone's ever bothered me with such
nonsense though :-)