Re: Ada used in General Aviation (GA) applications?

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

Lots of people here seem to lack much understanding of or sympathy for 
"Time To Market" - perhaps because they come from industries where this 
is not a big pressure. But you're right - in lots of business sectors 
(the ones that generate money for compiler vendors) time to market is 
*everything*. All the maintenance costs and long term bug problems in 
the world pale in comparison to "Time To Market".

So a company that is, for example, in the business of making some kind 
of controller board and programming it would look at a new project this 
way: We've got a new board similar to what we've been using all along. 
We have software that does some significant percentage of the job 
already written for existing products. We got a C compiler and debugger 
and other support tools sitting right here next to the new board ready 
to go. Our guys can get started programming this thing *today* and have 
it ready (including excess debugging time) in 3 or 4 months.

What? You'd like me to use Ada? But first I've got to go find an Ada 
compiler targeted to my little controller board, right? And then maybe 
I'm going to have to cobble it together with some C compiler? Along the 
way I get to worry about efficiency and if all this 
Ada-to-C-to-Machine-Code is going to generate good enough code to do the 
job. And then all my existing tools don't work right because they're all 
hooked to C in some manner, right? So I've got to fix them or live 
without them. With whatever existing code I still want to bring along, 
I've got to stop and write some sort of Ada binding to it to make it 
usable. Then I've got to rebuild experience in my staff with the 
compiler and all the tools so they don't get wrapped around the axle 
just trying to get it to do what they need it to do. Plus I've got to 
send my staff off to Ada school (against their will) and get them 
trained up to truly be effective with Ada. (Won't happen in two weeks, 
BTW) All this is going to take how many months before I can get started 
generating the code I need? And what is it I get out of it? Will my 
competitor sit still and do nothing while I'm off trying to convert to Ada?

This is an incredibly tough nut to crack and if Ada is serious about 
playing in that market, it ABSOLUTELY needs to be sitting on the shelf 
right next to the development board with 100% of everything you'd get 
with the corresponding C compiler and 100% of the quality of its output 
result. It needs that just in order to play the game. It won't win 
unless it *ALSO* brings with it enough developmental leverage to EXCEED 
the Time To Market the developer has at present with C. He's got to 
overcome the lag time of training up his resistant staff and rebuilding 
whatever essential tools he may have in place already.

The only way out of it is to either start a business that sells an 
incredibly wonderful embedded board for use in some market and supply 
with its development kit an Ada compiler with all the goodies. Or 
alternately, some home-hobbyist-entrepreneur cobbles the parts together 
and starts building an end product that happens to be programmed in Ada 
and that end product starts becomming successful. It won't happen by 
trying to persuade project managers (like me - who happens to be a fan 
of Ada) to switch over to Ada without a clear path to success sitting 
right there in front of them.

My advice would be to ignore the embedded market for the time being 
because it has by and large ignored Ada and is just too expensive for 
which to produce a sufficient product. Get in the door on a bigger 
market that might have some related connection to the embedded world and 
then see if it spills over into that realm.

MDC



Bernd Specht wrote:
> 
> Ok, but they write code for accessing a controller register in a few 
> minutes, to write it Ada with all those rep specs they would  need much 
> longer.
> In our business the first prio is "time to market".
> 


-- 
======================================================================
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

======================================================================