Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

["Per Dalgas Jakobsen" <i@hate.spam>]

> That's not so easy. I've seen lot of project managers chosing C++ even if
> they knew that Ada was cheaper/safer. As I said that's not so easy... This
is
> political, choising a technology that everybody uses can't be something
that
> we'll be reproached to you if the project is not on schedule/budget!

The good old story: "You don't get fired for choosing IBM".
The good old story on a new bottle: "You don't get fired for choosing
Microsoft".
The good old story on a another new bottle: "You don't get fired for
choosing C/C++".

One way to make Ada come through, is to make it visible to them. Not just to
those at the "safety-critical" segment, but to the entire software segment.
A couple of years ago I suggested changing from C/C++ to Ada on a company
strategy meeting. The suggestion was met with comments like: "No real
company is using Ada for anything", "Ada is a heavy/slow and expensive
language", "Only projects with a *lot* of money can do that", "We are not
building rockets or aeroplanes, we are just building ...".

Even though you can counter-argue most of their claims, they still have it
in their stomach and won't make the leap.

Instead of advertising for Ada in software magazines, web-sites, etc. I
believe that Ada needs to get an "image-lift" at executive level. Imagine if
we could get to the point when project managers are suggesting C/C++ and the
executive asks: "Why not use Ada?" :-p

It doesn't take many arguments to convince most serious programmers of the
advantages in Ada (even though there *are* religious extremists around, that
believe void-pointers and goto-statements are the only true way) - But it
really doesn't matter if the project managers doesn't have the courage to
even suggest it, because of the opinion of the executives.

Executives will like to hear:
*) that the reusability factor of Ada is magnitudes higher than for C/C++.
*) that Ada is much better suited than C/C++ for larger projects with
several (potential distanced) developers. And by larger, I mean almost any
project with a project manager.
*) that Ada projects results in fewer bugs at the customer.
I'll bet that this news-group can come up with a dozen or more easy-to-prove
arguments...

But another important thing to nail into their heads are: It does *not* have
to be expensive to choose Ada. Most visible projects are safety-critical
once, with budgets in the "heavy league".
We need to establish a common knowledge, that Ada is as cheap as choosing
C/C++ (buying toolchains), and that even small projects will have a higher
probability to complete on time with fewer bugs.
The cost of sending people on Ada courses will be insignificant in anything
but the narrowest view.


But how can we get the attention of the executives?
Let the brainstorm start ;-)

Per