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From: "Mike Silva" <mjsilva@jps.net>
Subject: Time to join the fold?
Date: 1999/01/22
Message-ID: <78abg4$cnc$1@its.hooked.net>#1/1
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Organization: Whole Earth Networks News
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-01-22T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Sometime this year my company will embark on a bigger and better version of
their industrial controller product family.  The current product uses a 16
bit chip programmed in C (I'm the main programmer, BTW), while the next
generation will be 32 bit (not yet chosen).  While I don't know Ada, I've
lurked here for a while, and have been reading the "Ada vs C++ vs Java"
thread with great interest.  Now I feel that I would be remiss not to
investigate Ada (Ada95 specifically) as an alternative to migrating our
current C code to the new products, and have ordered some books to start
learning the language.

Now for my questions (all assuming that I determine that switching to Ada is
a good idea).  First, how long would it take me (a long-time C [and a bit of
C++] programmer) to get productive in Ada?  Second, what is the best way to
present the case to my boss?  He's open-minded, but switching to a new
language that I don't know is bound to require plenty of justification.  I
know of most of the main Ada web sites and the success stories and "why Ada"
articles they have, but I was wondering if some of you might have further
opinions and/or experiences in "converting" a project or company to Ada.
Thanks a bunch for any insights.

Mike Silva