Re: employment with ada

[DPH <rally2xs@compuserve.com>]

On 1 May 2003 17:36:30 -0700, crebralfix@angelfire.com (tom) wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>i've been reading and learning about ada due to
>some...annoyance...with c++.  the first computer programming book i
>ever read was booch's _software engineering with ada_ ( got it for $2
>) and i've liked the language ever since.  now, it's 4 years later and
>i'm looking for a programming job.
>
>my question is:  what strategies do you use to successfully obtain
>work where you can program in ada on a regular basis?  monster.com
>showed 35 jobs ( for senior engineers ) nationwide ( US ).  what
>advice do you have for someone that is new to the language and fairly
>junior as a programmer?
>
>thanks,
>
>tom

Hi Tom,

I've just returned from the Software Technology Conference, a large
conference and trade show for DoD types, held annually in Salt Lake
City.  What I saw there leads me to say this:

While Ada is truely a superior language, I believe you should rethink
getting into it on anything above a hobby basis.

At the conference, one of the 40 minute talks was given by Lockheed
Martin on the Fate of Ada in the Joint Strike Fighter project.

Starting out by saying that they are all personally Ada zealots, and
strongly believe the langauge to be superior to anything else around,
the company was forced, by business realities, to do their safety
critical software in the Joint Strike Fighter in a safety critical
subset of C.

The safety critical subset of C is C with 172 restrictions, augmented
by a source code analyzer to look out for problems.

Why give up on Ada?  They actually did a study - this isn't just
someone's personal preference or prejudice.  They found:

1) No college in this country is teaching Ada.  There may be some
qualifiers on that that I don't remember, such as "as a major portion
of their program", or something like that, but in short there isn't a
source of new Ada programmers, nor is there likely to be.

2) If they hire someone and train them in Ada, and designate them to
program in Ada, all too often that person thinks to himself, "I'm
learning a dead langauge, with nowhere to go if this project fails or
completes" and the next thing you know, that person is in an exit
interview, looking for a job that will provide "marketable skills."

3) The people fleeing Ada are right - there were, at last survey 2
years ago, 5% Ada jobs.  An informal survey of the latest job market
puts it at around 1%.

4) They projected that they would have to go thru several code
overhauls to change compilers as Ada compiler providers either went
out of business, or dropped Ada compilers from their product line.

They emphasized, over and over, that they are personally Ada zealots,
but from a business perspective, Ada for much of the JSF code would be
a boneheaded business decision.  4% of the operational flight program
will be in Ada, the remainder in that subset of C.  Program-wide,
including the support software such as trainers, Ada will acount for
approx 1%.

I understand it.  I hate it, but I understand it.  The road to Ada, in
2003, now leads to a garbage pit.

I was about to say that the only hope to do Ada at all in the future
might be working for the government, but I already do that, and see
that the government has two problems.  These are:

1) The government is attempting to contract everything out.  If you
are in software at all in the government, you probably have a future
as a contract monitor.

2) Talk around where I work, where they actually do Ada, is toward
moving to C or C++.  I don't think we've done any Lockheed-Martin-like
studies, but those who think themselves futurists seem to be saying
this more and more.

Much as I hate to say it, I think Ada is dead.  If Lockheed Martin
can't make a business case for choosing Ada, who can?  What project
would still choose it, and why?  I can't think of anyone who could
justify swimming upstream like that.

Anyone?

Dave Head