From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-05 05:10:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.ash.giganews.com!border2.nntp.ash.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <40714C98.90601@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) References: <20040206174017.7E84F4C4114@lovelace.ada-france.org> <54759e7e.0402071124.322ea376@posting.google.com> <406EB6D2.8030801@noplace.com> <87d66pyw1g.fsf@insalien.org> <406EEC35.7040109@noplace.com> <874qs0zvy1.fsf@insalien.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 12:10:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.1.121 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1081167017 209.165.1.121 (Mon, 05 Apr 2004 05:10:17 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 05:10:17 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6747 Date: 2004-04-05T12:10:17+00:00 List-Id: Ludovic Brenta wrote: > > I differ in this respect. I find that I am much more productive with > Ada than with Java, C++, C or Pascal. With Ada, I spend more time > developing and less time debugging. > Yeah, but let's be fair. If you have to go out and roll your own GUI interfaces or database access interfaces or data structures or other numerous things that you might or might not get with a given language, that's making things dramatically worse. You have to develop the code and you have to test & debug the code (Ada doesn't guarantee zero defects, does it?) and that time is not zero. The more I get with an environment the less work I do getting an app up and running. And I probably spend less time debugging as well, because on the whole, I write less code. What I reuse from the vendor's libraries is *probably* more stable than something I just now coded up, so I'm likely to save time reusing their work. > > Ada has all the libraries needed to get that kind of leverage. The > only problem is that these libraries don't come with the compiler, so > you have to look for them. Or use Debian :) > Ada might or might not have available libraries that end up providing the same amount of support you'd get with some other language like Java. You'd have to do a study to find out. But they are clearly not "standard", they are not delivered with the compiler, they may or may not have documentation of questionable quality and consistency, they probably won't look similar in design, they are mostly unsupported, etc... Why is something like Visual Basic popular with developers? They get *everything* they need to develop an app in one nice shrink-wrapped package. It has documentation (some might be critical of it, but having it at all is better than nothing and usually I've found I can learn what I need to from Microsoft docs.) Books are written about how to use it. It has all the pre-built interfaces to what you need on the system. It *works* right out of the box with no need to mess around trying to integrate the different pieces and get them all to work together. When someone goes to build an app, they generally have some limited time in which to get the job done. Spending time researching different libraries, pulling them all together, trying to figure out how they work, trying to simply get them to work at all, reading source code because there is little to no documentation, building "glue" code to stick them together because they aren't all built on the same design philosophy, etc., etc., etc... This is all time spent *NOT* developing the app of interest. Perhaps there are geeks out there who enjoy building their own custom development environment out of bits and pieces. They can play "Systems Integrator" and spend their time on tool development. I'm afraid I don't want to hire those guys because I have a *job* that needs to get done and tinkering around endlessly with the tools isn't going to get it done. That's why I can easily understand when someone opts for "One Stop Shopping" in selecting a toolset. > > No, they are not fools. Their legitimate reason for choosing Java is > that "everybody uses it", so it is easy for them to find disposable, > cheap beginner programmers. They instruct these programmers to > deliver buggy code quickly. These beginners are all too happy to use > an "easy" and "fashionable" language, which their teachers at school > taught them because "the industry demands it" (see the self-fulfilling > prophecy there?). Then, when customers complain about the bugs, they > blame the developers and fire them. Now is an "urgent" problem, so > they quickly hire new apprentices and use them to churn out a new, > buggy release that "fixes" the worst bugs while at the same time > bringing new ones. > > In short, their legitimate and important reasons are "job security for > managers" and "repeat customers". > > Development managers want a high price/quality ratio, i.e. a high > development price and low quality. Why? Because, by spending lots of > money on development, they are important. And by delivering low > quality, they can say "See? My budget was too low!", and they can > also charge big bucks to customers. > > In corporations, customers want a high price, because spending lots of > money makes them important. But they also want high quality. Once > they've paid the big bucks for the expensive software they've > selected, they are reluctant to admit that it's buggy or inadequate. > Therefore, they pay even more for fixes and upgrades, and eveyone is > happy. > > Except for software developers and end users. The former work under > pressure and get all the blame, while the latter have so totally lost > confidence in the software that they blame it for everything. > This sounds a little cynical and a bit like setting up a strawman in order to knock him down. I've worked in a number of places that have used a variety of toolsets to make lots of different products. In general, I've found that people basically *want* to do a good job - including management. I've also learned over time that often the "worker bees" like to criticize any/all management decisions as "stupid" or "selfish" when in fact, they are not. Often management decisions are just being made based on criteria that worker bees either don't know about, don't understand or disagree with. In my experience, the decisions are seldom either stupid or selfish - they are usually someone's honest attempt to make the best decision they could to further the goals of the organization. Its real easy to play "Monday Morning Quarterback" and criticize every decision that gets made, but its a lot harder to take the reigns, make the decisions and live with the consequences. That said, I will again reiterate that selecting Java is not a foolish choice in many contexts. I think it is more productive to understand *why* people will select Java and - if we would rather they selected Ada instead - give them what they need in Ada to satisfy their selection criteria. Why did Java - starting out from zero - garner a large user base? Because Sun was big and Sun was promoting it hard and Sun forced it on people? The same could be said for Ada and the DoD. Java catches on and Ada doesn't? Maybe Java was satisfying some needs out there pretty well. Maybe Ada could take a lesson on that score and go out and satisfy some customer needs better than any other choice. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "Face it ladies, its not the dress that makes you look fat. Its the FAT that makes you look fat." -- Al Bundy ======================================================================