Re: Ada in Iraq

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

On 29 Apr 2003 18:33:56 GMT, Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org (Colin Paul
Gloster) wrote:

>Of those people who work as subcontractors to the European Space
>Agency, two of the most ardent supporters of Java and detractors of Ada
>(namely Alessandro Pasetti -- who unlike most people whose first choice 
>is not Ada, he does actually understand Ada 83 and Ada 95 and profiles
>very well and has actually given me valuable support in an Ada project --
>of P & P Software ( HTTP://WWW.PnP-Software.com/ ) and Erik Aad Visser of
>Computer Hardware Een Embedded Software Systems
>( HTTP://WWW.CHESS.NL/chess_alg.php?language=english ))

I hope they were happy to be named here!

>said at the DAta
>Systems In Aerospace ( HTTP://WWW.Eurospace.org/dasia.html ) conference
>last year that they expect it would be nearly as late at 2007 before there
>would be a Java implementation of high enough reliability to use in space
>(in orbit and unmanned).

As a matter of interest, who is carrying out the implementation of
High-Rel Java? Is it Sun? For what it's worth (although this may have
changed) the license on the Java SDK explicitly forbade the use of
Java on mission or safety critical systems. It's been fairly clear for
what purpose Java was originally developed, and I see that as an issue
for future High-Rel development.

>As far as the language chosen not being a fundamental detail and only
>being an implementation issue is concerned, there are actually flexibility
>benefits or penalties in choosing between different programming languages.

Of course - some languages are better suited to some tasks than
others. Java is well suited to little boys' toys (e.g. STBs, phones
etc), and Ada is well suited to big boys' toys (e.g. aircraft, trains,
spacecraft etc) :-)

Best Regards
John McCabe

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