Re: Call for Ada

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Just remember that with *lots* of software, nobody actually *cares* what 
the error rates or long-term costs are. They need to GET TO MARKET 
QUICKLY and they can worry about the debugging (if at all) later. If Ada 
can't do it as quickly as some other language (perhaps because of 
infrastructure and/or related libraries) then it LOSES every time. Why? 
All the long term benefits in the world don't matter if there is no 
"long term". You've got to get your product out before your competitor 
does or they own the market. Nobody has to *like* that fact - they just 
have to live with it.

MDC



Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> Wes Groleau wrote:
> 
>> Scenario:  Two 100,000 SLOC collections.
>> One in Ada, with (hope, hope) 1 error per 100 SLOC
>> One in C, with 10 per 100 SLOC
> 
> 
> At least 2 studies indicate that Ada reduces errors by a factor of 4.
> 
>> Assume an Ada programmer can find and fix a bug
>> in a day, while the C guy takes two.
> 
> 
> The same studies indicate that Ada reduces the time/cost to fix an error 
> by a factor of 10.
> 
>> There are a hundred C hackers and 5 Ada hackers.
> 
> 
> There are 100s of 1000s of C hackers. There are many Ada software 
> engineers, but I'll accept 5 as the the number of Ada hackers :)
> 
> So, if Ada actually has 1 error per 100 LOC, then real numbers indicate 
> 1000 errors in the Ada and 4000 in the C. If it actually takes 1 day to 
> correct an error in the Ada, then real numbers indicate that it takes 10 
> days to correct an error in the C. So we get 1000 person-days/5 people = 
> 200 days for Ada, and 40000 person-days/100 people = 400 days for C. Ada 
> still wins.
> 
> I haven't seen any data to support it, but I suspect that C introduces 
> more new errors for every error fixed than Ada, giving Ada an even 
> greater edge, for the same reasons that C creates more errors in the 1st 
> place.
> 


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