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

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

Why does that have to exclude Time To Market? T.T.M. does *not* mean 
that a system has to be buggy or unsafe. If Ada was providing tools, 
utilities, features, etc., to a given market that meant significant 
leverage to those who develop for that market, wouldn't they get some 
added quality as well just by using Ada and having it perform its checks 
on the code prior to delivery?

Industries have various levels of required quality. I expect more from 
flight certified software than I do from the average open source freebie 
desktop app I downloaded from the internet. Assume Ada has that elusive 
All Other Things Being Equal factor when compared against Language-X in 
a given problem domain. If so, then your time to market is equal, except 
you get fewer bugs as a bonus - and probably some percentage of faster 
development time too because you don't debug as much. Assume Ada tosses 
on top of that some spiffy features, utilities, libraries, etc., that 
reduce that time to market by 50%. Ada suddenly has a *HUGE* competitive 
advantage over Language-X. Enough so that it might persuade someone to 
bite the bullet and take a chance using Ada in the next deployment of a 
product.

So A) Define the market you want, B) Fix it so that all other things are 
nearly equal and C) Provide a truckload of additional leverage so that 
the argument to use Ada is extremely compelling to the guys who have to 
keep their business alive by whupping-up on their competitors who stick 
with Language-X. (Note: It's not compelling enough just to say you'll 
get fewer bugs. Ada has been making that case for years and it hasn't 
persuaded many commercial users.)

Or we could just get cynical about it and abandon hope of seeing Ada 
successful somewhere in the commercial computer world. ;-)

MDC


Randy Brukardt wrote:

> programs will kill us). Ada is about building programs the right way, with
> few bugs and ability to fix/enhance in the future.


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

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