Ada Education and Training - Part 3

[EBERARD@ADA20.ISI.EDU (Edward V. Berard)]

Recently, an instructor at one of the military academies told me how
she had selected a book for an introductory Ada class. She had
rejected Booch's book (Software Engineering With Ada) in favor of
another text. It was not so much the text she had selected that
bothered me, as it was her reason for rejecting Booch's book. "Booch
takes too long to get to any code.", she said, "I want to see
something like 'Hello World' real quick." [For those of you who have
never programmed in C, or, more precisely, read Kernighan and
Ritchie's book on the C programming language, the "Hello World"
program is the first C program covered in many introductory C
courses.]

Kernighan and Ritchie (K&R) and Booch represent two very different
views on teaching programming. K&R stresses the age old thinking which
says that students of software must see, write, and execute code
before anything else will be meaningful. Booch, on the other hand,
stresses that students should know what they are doing before they
attempt to write code. The K&R approach has its roots in software
antiquity.

Programming code is the "cocaine" of the software world. To many
programmers and managers it is all that matters. While software is
being designed, managers wait nervously and the programmers/coders
wait impatiently. One the design document is finished, the "real work"
can begin. With any luck the code which is produced may closely
resemble what is described in the design documentation.

To an outsider this infatuation with code seems strange. One hears
from many sources that coding usually takes up only 10 to 15 percent
of the software life-cycle. Why then do we focus so much attention on
the syntax and semantics of the programming language? Several reasons
come to mind:

   1) Many of those who are already programmers and instructors
      believe strongly that, only if one is intimately familiar with
      code, can one fully understand the implications of any other
      part of the software life-cycle.

   2) Some in the Ada community feel that the software engineering
      embodied in the Ada language will either be obvious to the
      neophytes or that through constant use of the Ada language, good
      software engineering concepts will be absorbed "via osmosis."

   3) The concept of "instant gratification" is very much entrenched
      in modern software production. Sitting at their terminals in
      their offices or cubicles, programmers very much resemble "rats
      in Skinner boxes" who continually press a lever (the RETURN key)
      for constant reenforcement of their behavior. We are only now
      beginning to see tools which will allow us to "execute a design."

   4) Software people have little faith in those concepts that come
      before the coding phase. "How can anyone possibly describe
      something which is not yet coded?", they reason. There is little
      emphasis on non-coding tasks in most commonly available
      training.

It seems that most people have not understood the intentions of the
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) regarding the Ada effort. It is
better engineered software that is desired, not merely "FORTRAN
rewritten using the syntax and semantics of the Ada language." Too
much emphasis has been placed on a tool (Ada) and not on the task
(better software). 

Learning the details of the Ada language is at the "noise level" of
most software projects. In fact, only a very small part of any "Ada
education effort" needs to focus on the language itself. Concepts like
configuration management, software design methodologies, data
abstraction, concurrency, software testing, and project management
must be an important part of any Ada training effort.

Of course, there are many problems which must be solved, for example:

   -  Contracting offices and project managers must recognize that the
      least significant part of any Ada training effort is the
      learning of the syntax and semantics of the language. Yes, it is
      important for programmers to learn the Ada language, but this is
      a trivial task compared to learning about modern software
      engineering. 

   -  Many of those who "teach" the Ada language are unfamiliar with
      the bulk of modern software engineering. For example, most may
      only have familiarity with functional decomposition approaches
      to software development. Few can name any references on software
      quality assurance. A surprising number cannot cite any studies
      which correlate coding style with debugging and testing
      efficiency.

   -  When software engineering concepts are introduced into an Ada
      curriculum, it is often introduced in a very "watered down"
      form. This is so that those least prepared to develop quality
      software can maintain their positions -- managers *and*
      programmers.

   -  There is still a widely-held belief that all that is involved
      with transitioning to Ada technology is a change of programming
      language. In reality, software development and maintenance
      practices will have to change, in-house and government software
      standards will be impacted, and business practices will change.
      [It is often those in the commercial sector who pick this up
      more readily than those in the defense sector. Further, those
      doing business applications using Ada technology more quickly
      see the impact of Ada technology than those doing scientific and
      engineering applications.]

I would recommend that those charged with procuring Ada training, and
those who determine the Ada qualifications of a potential contractor,
look beyond mere coding ability. We must recognize that probably the
greatest effort facing the advocates of Ada technology will be
reformation of "code junkies."

				-- Ed Berard
				   (301) 695-6960
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