Re: Ada noob here! Is Ada widely used?

[Duke Normandin <dukeofperl@ml1.net>]

On 2010-05-24, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:00:58 -0400, Stephen Leake wrote:
>
>> Duke Normandin <dukeofperl@ml1.net> writes:
>> 
>>> On 2010-05-23, Jeffrey R. Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.acm.org> wrote:
>>>> Bruno Le Hyaric wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> One question, why did Lockheed Martin choose C++ for avionics software
>>>>> on the JSF aircraft project?
>>>>
>>>> Money.
>>>>
>>>> Most US Defense project contracts are set up so the contractor makes more money 
>>>> the more the project costs. A poor but "popular" language choice, lots of 
>>>> coders, and no SW engineers is one way to drive the cost up and make more money. 
>>>> Defense contractors have maximizing the profit down to a fine art.
>>>
>>> That's outright scary when you ponder all the implications. So much for
>>> using the "right tool, for a particular task".  Greed, greed, and more greed
>>> is what is putting us at at risk in this embedded computer age. 
>> 
>> It's not the contractor's fault; it's the DOD's fault. If they wrote the
>> contract so that the contractor made more money by using the right tools
>> and writing good software, that's what would happen.
>> 
>> It's the contractor's job to make as much money as possible; it's the
>> client's job to set the terms of the contract.
>
> Nice theory, not working in practice. Imagine your baker trying making as
> much money as possible and you setting terms on the bread's ingredients. 
>
> It is the fault of the CS unable to deliver a sound background for software
> engineering. Which is more shamanism than engineering. This in turn makes
> it impossible to impose *reasonable* regulations on what software is and
> how it is to be engineered. (Unreasonable regulations are plenty, of
> course) Meaningful regulations exist, for example, for bakers, so when you
> buy bread it is bread. When you buy software it can be anything. Because
> nobody knows for sure how to do it "right". It is "our" word against the
> word of c-java-dot-net-UML camp. The latter is far more vocal. So what do
> you expect DoD to do?
>

I totally agree! and putting your points into a particular perspective - it
doesn't make _any_ difference to the health and welfare of this planet if
the next video game to hit the shelves is buggier than hell, because it was
written in whatever, taking 3 times as long to write than what it could have
taken using saner tools. However the (programming) flavor-of-the-decade is
set, so "industry follows suit" like good little sheep.

which leads me to academia!. Some egg-head(s) get it into their skulls that
this or that language is cool, so some university starts to push flavor A,
at the expense of other "industry-proven" technology.  CS students are
exposed to this "new" sweetheart technology to the exclusion of all others,
including day-to-day brainwashing.  A few years after graduation, these same
CS students are managers somewhere, talking to clueless bean-counters about
how great this or that technology is, and how it should be used to program
various aircraft flight systems et al; and automobile acceleration-control
software (or whatever); and the list goes on.  So it's another
"chicken-or-the-egg" thing.  Meanwhile, Ada, M Technology (aka Mumps),
COBOL, the latter 2 having billions of lines of code still extent, useful
and necessary, are relegated to academia's antiquities museum.  Bullshit! 
and the story keeps repeating itself over and over again.  Anyway, this is
totally OT, so I had better quit while I'm ahead.  ;)
-- 
Duke
*** Tolerance becomes a crime, when applied to evil [Thomas Mann] ***