Re: Ada noob here! Is Ada widely used?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:

> On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:00:58 -0400, Stephen Leake wrote:
>
>> Duke Normandin <dukeofperl@ml1.net> writes:
>> 
>>> On 2010-05-23, Jeffrey R. Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.acm.org> wrote:
>>>> Bruno Le Hyaric wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> One question, why did Lockheed Martin choose C++ for avionics software
>>>>> on the JSF aircraft project?
>>>>
>>>> Money.
>>>>
>>>> Most US Defense project contracts are set up so the contractor makes more money 
>>>> the more the project costs. A poor but "popular" language choice, lots of 
>>>> coders, and no SW engineers is one way to drive the cost up and make more money. 
>>>> Defense contractors have maximizing the profit down to a fine art.
>>>
>>> That's outright scary when you ponder all the implications. So much for
>>> using the "right tool, for a particular task".  Greed, greed, and more greed
>>> is what is putting us at at risk in this embedded computer age. 
>> 
>> It's not the contractor's fault; it's the DOD's fault. If they wrote the
>> contract so that the contractor made more money by using the right tools
>> and writing good software, that's what would happen.
>> 
>> It's the contractor's job to make as much money as possible; it's the
>> client's job to set the terms of the contract.
>
> Nice theory, not working in practice. Imagine your baker trying making as
> much money as possible and you setting terms on the bread's ingredients. 

Not a valid comparison; I don't have nearly as much buying power as the
DOD.

A better comparison is a national supermarket chain negotiating with
several large bakery chains. And that does work much better than the DOD
vs the military contractors.

> It is the fault of the CS 

? Civil Servants? Computer Science?

> unable to deliver a sound background for software engineering. Which
> is more shamanism than engineering. 

If it's shamanism, then how are the computer science schools at fault?
"Worship Microsoft" sounds like good shamanism. It used to be "worship
IBM".

The complaint was that the contractors are greedy. Under capitalism, the
assumption is that _everyone_ is greedy, but the government sets the
rules so the societies best interest is served by everyone's greed.

It takes a long term view, and adequate social/political education on
everyone's part. _that's_ why it doesn't work; thinking is hard, most
people don't want to do it.

Just like writing good code in Ada is harder than writing sloppy code in
C. To bring this mildly back on topic.

> This in turn makes it impossible to impose *reasonable* regulations on
> what software is and how it is to be engineered. 

We don't need regulations, we need success oriented contracting.

Part of the problem is people don't know how to manage large systems;
that's why the air traffic control system is not replaced yet.

> (Unreasonable regulations are plenty, of course) Meaningful
> regulations exist, for example, for bakers, so when you buy bread it
> is bread. 

Depends; if I buy it at the local grocery store, it's more like plastic.
If I buy it at the farmer's market, then it is bread. The only
regulation involved is health; no bacteria or mold allowed. 

> When you buy software it can be anything. Because nobody knows for
> sure how to do it "right". 

It is much easier to measure results than to enforce process. But people
don't want to spend the time to do that either.

> It is "our" word against the word of c-java-dot-net-UML camp. The
> latter is far more vocal. So what do you expect DoD to do?

Require results, not process.

Banks get good software for their central money servers, because they
insist that they actually work, and are secure, and spend the money to
ensure that happens (and some of them are written in SPARK).

NASA's space shuttle software doesn't fail, because they insist on not
killing astronauts. The strategy in response to that requirement is to
take CMM to heart, and don't let new hires write code until they know
what they are doing. But it's the insistence on the goal that matters.

Commercial airline software is more reliable than the rest of the plane.

Good software is possible, it's just hard work on everyone's part.

-- 
-- Stephe