Re: Anybody in US using ADA ? One silly idea..

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

I don't know whether I can use this as a counterexample or not.  My
recollection is that Silicon Graphics was using Ada internally VERY early in
their life, and they were keeping this VERY quiet because it was helping
them, a lot, and they didn't really want anyone else to know.

Rational used Ada internally, and it helped them a lot.  They published
their numbers, but the reaction at GD/FW was that it just wasn't possible to
get those kinds of numbers.

McDonnell-Douglas had been using assembly language on F-15.  For the
IFFC/Firefly demonstration, they jumped into Ada with both feet,
enthusiastically, and reported very good numbers, for a digital flight
control application.  (IFFC/Firefly was Integrated Flight and Fire Controls:
the idea was to let the firecontrol computers cue the flight control system
directly, to let the airplane help the pilot point the airplane and the
weapons at the target.  The demo pilot reportedly said, very
enthusiastically, "I don't know if I fired the gun or the airplane did, but
WE GOT HIM!")

I do know that Silicon Graphics was unique among workstation manufacturers
for having a solid Ada toolset long before anyone else did.

Software development very much WAS the schedule driver on F-16C/D.  First
flight was a year late because the software came in a year behind schedule.
You better believe that caused some ruffled feathers.  (I was told by an
old-timer there that it had something to do with a senior manager
arbitrarily carving a year out of the development schedule estimates...)

"Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> wrote in message
news:av42sd$jje$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
> Problem: Those were big companies and the projects were very long lived
> where software development was not going to be the cost or schedule
driver.
> How many commercial products are in that position? Your average
> garage-startup company is never going to be able to let out contracts to
get
> a compiler retargeted and your average small business is never going to be
> able to wait until the retargeted compiler is ready to use before they can
> start development.
>
> Ada shot itself in the foot early on because it was A) Too expensive, B)
> Didn't work well and C) Wasn't available for the platforms people were
> developing on. It pretty much cured those problems by now - but too late
to
> avoid all the damage and missed opportunities. Now it faces new problems
and
> it has to address those if it hopes to avoid the same missed
opportunities.
>
> MDC
> --
> ======================================================================
> Marin David Condic
> I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
> My project is: http://www.jast.mil/
>
> Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g
>
>     "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
>         --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
> ======================================================================
>
> John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
> news:80F453381B124BF8.ACEC58777658C8DC.89DCAA63449DBB7B@lp.airnews.net...
> >
> > In the very early 1980s, General Dynamics / Fort Worth Division started
> the
> > F-16C/D program.  This was a MAJOR upgrade of the airplane, involving,
> among
> > other things, all new computers and all new software.
> >
> > Ada wasn't there yet, so they chose JOVIAL J73.
> >
> > At that time, there existed precisely one J73 compiler, and it didn't
> target
> > EITHER of the processors they were designing into the airplane (Zilog
> Z8002
> > and MIL-STD-1750A).  They wound up having to let compiler development
> > contracts to two (small) companies to develop toolsets.
> >
> > At that time, trained J73 programmers just plain didn't exist.  GD/FW
had
> to
> > train every single programmer they hired for that project.
> >
> > Every time I hear someone grumbling about the scarcity of trained Ada
> > programmers, I think about F-16C/D and JOVIAL, and I wonder how GD/FW
ever
> > managed to get that airplane off the ground, if training is so hard.
> >
> > I'm not even going to mention HAL/S, the Space Shuttle language, which
to
> my
> > (unclassified) knowledge was not used for anything else on the planet.
> > Where does NASA (and the SEI Level 5 contractor) get trained HAL/S
> > programmers?
> >
> >
> >
>
>