Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

> Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> > From rumors I've heard Boeing is drifting away from Ada for a lot of the
> > same reasons as other aerospace firms - the programmers want to work in
> > something more marketable.

A common but highly irresponsible behavior on the web and usenet is to
post rumours when you really don't know any facts. So often, these rumours
quickly get taken as fact, and it is often the case that they have no
grounding in fact at all.

In fact the situation at Boeing is that some programs are using Ada and
some are not. Some new developments are using Ada, some are not. I doubt
anyone has meaningful overall figures that would support a conclusion
of whether overall use is increasing at Boeing or not. Most certainly from
ACT's point of view, we see an increase in use of Ada at Boeing, but that's
only one point of view :-)

The use of Ada is of course subject to competition. We will lose some and
win some. When you lose, you try to learn, but it is singularly unhelpful
to draw broad conclusions.

I can certainly say that ACT is a company that is essentially 100% devoted
to Ada based products, and we see our business expanding steadily. I can't
speak for other Ada companies, but I can certainly be confident that neither
Ada nor ACT are about to disappear in the forseeable future.

I suggest people spend less time in uninformed discussions on the future of
Ada use, and more time in contributing to the technical base :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies