Re: How many different processors do you use?

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <7jjij7$qci$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  muddy_buddy@my-deja.com wrote:
> 1. The Ada comittee went and created their own syntak, and
> increased the learning curve.

Committee? what committee? sounds like you are under the false
(though common) impression that Ada was designed by a committee.
In fact Ada was designed by a small team, lead by one person
who had ultimate authority and control. As for a new syntax,
the syntax of Ada is actually quite similar to Pascal. I can't
imagine that the *syntax* contributes to a learning curve.

> 2. The Reagen adminstration was so anti-gov that they didn't
> fund a quality free or at least cheap Ada development system
> for education, and small companies.

This claim is not even vagely related to reality.

> An Ada development system could cost upto 10,000 $ for
> a bad product.

Perhaps, but certainly there were excellent compiler costing
much less than this figure. In my experience, cost was a small
factor in most situations.

> 3. Ada's requirements on compiliers made them more expensive,
> and very hard to do on DSP, and small embedded Processors.

Dubious claim. Certainly most of the cost of an Ada compiler is
entirely processor independent.

> This meant that Chip manufactures were reluctant to fund
> development.

Actually many manufacturers DID fund development in Ada 83 days
>
> 4. The high costs of using Ada prevented widespread use
> outside the defense industry.

This is a claim without any data to back it up

> 5. As said before, the government blind insistance that Ada
> was the choice for everything, embittered the defense
> companies and their Engineers.

I don't think so, some contractors and engineers were annoyed,
others ignored the mandate in any case, others embraced it and
became enthusiastic supporters.

It sounds like you were not around at the time, perhaps that is
unfair, but your tendency to paint things black and white, when
in fact they were not nearly so clear cut, suggests it.

> 6. All of the above has created a situlation, where staffing
> Ada programmers is very, very difficult.

No, not so difficult.

> Many companies have given up and switched back to C/C++
> including mine.

Some have, some haven't.

> This problem was made much worst by the current engineering
> market, where people need and want to be able to move often.
> Knowing Ada is not a big plus outside defense
> and a few related fields.

Let me get this right. On the one hand it is impossible to find
Ada programmers, on the other hand knowing Ada is not a valuable
job skill. SOmething doesn't compute here :-)

> 7.  The killer is that defense programs run for years and thus
> you like to start with the state of the Art Processors.  Since
> Ada is not a popular language it is almost never supported at
> the start of a Processor life cycle.

Actually it is very rarely the case that defense programs use
state of the art processors. For one thing, it is often the
case that special or hardened versions of processors are
required.

In practice, multiple Ada compilers have been available very
rapidly for nearly every processor being seriously considered
for defence (and commercial) applications.

> BTW I know Ada and it is better than C, though the tools
> aren't too hot.

I am sure this is true of some Ada tools, I am equally sure that
you are not fully familiar with all Ada tools around. Some
people find tools they are very happy with, others do not, a
statement that can equally well be said of other languages (I
know at least one project that is very upset that there is no
good equivalent of ASIS for C++ :-)

But the important thing is to remember that just because your
company moved from Ada to C++ does not mean that it was a
sensible decision, and more importantly does not mean that all
other companies are making the same mistake (if indeed it was
a mistake in your case, as you imply).


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