Re: Advice on selling Ada to a C shop

["Peter C. Chapin" <pcc482719@gmail.com>]

Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:

> Showing examples are one excellent way to illustrate Ada advantage over C.

Putting Ada up against C seems so unfair... like kicking a man when he's down!
A comparison of Ada and C++ seems more appropriate. I realize that's not what
the original poster is talking about.

For myself personally I became a believer when I realized Ada's various rules
and restrictions were forcing my programs into a better design. In order
to "work around" the Ada compiler's "annoying" messages I often had to
refactor my design... sometimes more than once while I was learning the
basics of the language. The funny thing... once that refactoring was complete
I was left with a program that was far superior to what I was originally
trying to write. As an added bonus it worked too!

It didn't take too many experiences like that to convince me that Ada is good
language. These days I regard the language as a kind of automated expert
looking over my shoulder and helping to keep me from wandering off into the
tall weeds. Unfortunately it's probably hard to demonstrate that sort of
thing. One really needs to build some Ada programs. The key is convincing the
team to keep an open mind during their initial experimentation with the
language. If they jump to the conclusion that Ada is pointlessly fussy
("typical military language" etc), all might be lost.

Peter