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From: eachus@mbunix.mitre.org (Robert Eachus)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Re^2: Ada 9X objectives
Summary: Software is not the only thing being developed.
Keywords: development cycle
Message-ID: <73595@linus.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 89 18:16:43 GMT
References: <1373@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <16176@vail.ICO.ISC.COM>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: eachus@mbunix.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass.
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <16176@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
>jcardow@blackbird.afit.af.mil (James E. Cardow) writes:
>> ...Consider the ten to twenty year development cycle for large projects...

>If you have a ten-year development cycle for a software project, you're
>going to be producing obsolete software!  You can't help it.  Ten years is
>just too long for anything tied to computers--the technology moves too
>fast.

    In many cases the schedule is determined by something other than
the software, such as the Space Shuttle.  (And the only reason that
software wasn't on the critical path was the problems with the tiles,
but I digress.)  Or any new commercial jet aircraft like the 7J7, or
military projects like the Advanced Tactical Fighter...

    Software schedules for such large, long duration projects will
include many builds and tests before the actual aircraft is flown.
Again, to use the Space Shuttle as an example, the filght software was
extensively tested (and frequently crashed) in various simulators
before the Shuttle was ever flown, and the Shuttle was flown as a
glider several years before it was ever launched from the cape.

    Each software build may have a short schedule, but you need the
software from build 1 to still mean the same thing when build 27 (or
build 103) gets tested for the first time in the air, and when build
34 goes into the first production aircraft.

					Robert I. Eachus

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