Re: is Ada dying?

["martin.m.dowie" <martin.m.dowie@ntlworld.com>]

"John McCabe" <john.mccabe@emrad.com.nospam> wrote in message
news:3bc16680.2581922@news.demon.co.uk...
> On Sun, 7 Oct 2001 20:42:08 +0100, "martin.m.dowie"
> <martin.m.dowie@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> >The evidence from the UK is that Ada use is increasing. Check out
articles
> >in
> >www.cw360.com and www.jobserve.co.uk has about 5 times as many jobs
> >for Ada as it did around March/April 2000 (when I was last looking for
> >work :-)
>
> Have you considered that perhaps there are simply 5 times more
> agencies trying to find candidates for one job? If you look closely at
> many of the Ada jobs on Jobserve they are for:

Yes, I have, my sporatic job survey if full of potential holes. My
one potentially saving grace is that the same assumptions are made
about each language I sampled. Totally unscientific and I wouldn't
suggest otherwise - but I'm sure there are definately more Ada jobs
out there this year than last.

The www.cw360.com survey is, I suspect, much more reliable and
they too have noticed the same trends (i.e. Ada up 40% every quarter
for the last year, C++ about 50% down, Java about 40% down -
working from memory here...).

The other interesting skill is C# which seems to be gaining and approaching
the level of Ada adverts already, at the expense of C++ it would seem.

Hopefully, a few "Ada for .NET" compilers will appear!


> Bristol:       BAE Systems
Aerosystems too.

> Borehamwood:   Easams

Most likely ALSTOM


> A lot of the jobs available at these companies are jobs on (defence)
> projects that have been running for a number of years, and on projects
> that are just upgrades of current products. The evidence I have seen
> is that there are very few, if any at all, new projects coming up that
> are using Ada. This is one of the reasons I have 'deserted' to find a
> job using a language that I believe has more of a future (well,
> possibly - at least it's more likely to lead into other languages
> based on this one that have a future).
>
> It's unfortunate really but I don't really see a future in Ada,
> although I would recommend learning it because it helps to enforce a
> sense of discipline required for programming in teams.

Well, some of the biggest projects coming up in the UK defence are
actually going to expand on their use of Ada from previous projects
and these are the sort of projects that will keep you employed for the
rest of your working life (assuming your 20+ years old), if you play
your cards right. So, I wouldn't worry about that tooo much about
the future. :-)

Why do you consider getting security clearance such a big drag? Once
you have it you get it renewed every few year after filling in the same
form. Unless you have something hid of course?... ;-)