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From: terry@moogvax.UUCP (Terry Westley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Why don't more companies use Ada (was: Re: case sensitivity)
Summary: Inertia and cost
Message-ID: <803@moogvax.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 89 14:45:24 GMT
References: <8902201944.AA05264@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> <319@sagpd1.UUCP>
Reply-To: terry@moogvax.UUCP (Terry Westley)
Followup-To: comp.lang.ada
Organization: Moog Inc. Electronics & Systems Division, Orchard Park NY
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <319@sagpd1.UUCP> banderso@sagpd1.UUCP (Bruce Anderson) writes:
>On another subject, in one of the replies, David Papay comments:
>>One last comment: Its too bad that many people feel "forced" to use Ada,
>
>I think that the primary reason people feel "forced" to use Ada is that 
>they _ARE_ forced to use Ada. I may be wrong, but I don't think that most
>companies who go out and design a microwave oven which happens to have a
>processor in it are using C or Fortran or Pascal because the customer
>won't buy it if they don't. They use a particular language because it
>suits their environment best and _they_ get to decide what fits best.

So, why don't more companies who have to build a microwave oven use Ada?

Here's my experience and what I hear from my peers in other companies
(mostly not DoD contractors):

1) Inertia.  Ada is perceived as a large, clumsy, expensive, military
   language.  Those who decide about languages often don't even
   consider it.  Mostly, people don't change because they have a
   billion lines of Fortran or C code and nobody ever told them they
   can still use it and also get many of the advantages Ada offers.

   Recently, I gave a talk at the local ACM chapter meeting about Ada
   features for software reuse.  I got a compliment from a programming
   manager on the talk.  He said that it was the first time he'd heard
   about some real advantages of using Ada!

   Have we really done such a poor job in getting the word out about
   how Ada addresses many of the difficulties of developing software?

2) Cost.  That's my problem here.  We do both military and commercial
   work.  In 1983, we chose Ada over C, Pascal, and Forth for doing
   real-time, embedded work.  We had been using assembler for
   closed-loop control of servovalves and other work.  In spite of the
   problems of Ada in 1983, we successfully completed two systems.
   Subsequently, we switched to C because of the cost of using Ada:
   high priced compilers, excessive memory usage, and slow execution
   time.

   Now that these problems seem to have abated somewhat, we are stuck
   with C because of the first reason: inertia.

   It's obvious to me that we would be more productive designing and
   coding in Ada (than in C) and could easily recover the cost of the
   compiler, but the inertia is enormous.

   Does anyone have any experience justifying a switch to Ada where you
   were not forced to?
-- 
  Terry Westley         
  Moog, Inc. (no, not the synthesizer company)
  East Aurora, NY  14052-0018
  {boulder,decvax,rocksanne,rutgers,ames}!sunybcs!moogvax!terry