From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b50bc6538a649497 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Ada student homework ? Date: 2000/11/11 Message-ID: <8ujp12$3vk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 692406443 References: <3A02CED4.520C2768@brighton.ac.uk> <3A078B6F.D34B024B@erols.com> <8ua3m1$bru$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3A0916BB.584C6C60@cadwin.com> <3A0952B9.34BE19D1@cadwin.com> <3A0A2E53.DD650D8A@ix.netcom.com> <3A0A6B56.7437E9E7@cadwin.com> <3A0B68EF.A06B276D@ix.netcom.com> <3A0BB50B.96F77015@cadwin.com> <3A0BEAC7.5BC70E0@cadwin.com> <3A0BFA4A.5FA9D365@erols.com> <3A0C03BE.C3216454@cadwin.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x68.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.240 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Nov 11 15:36:02 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 2000-11-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <3A0C03BE.C3216454@cadwin.com>, Nicolas Brunot wrote: > If you want companies to use Ada, don't tell them that > Microsoft or Oracle are failures > (Unless you prove you can make better than them, but in that > case you would be as famous as them ...) No, Microsoft is not successful in terms of quality, but in terms of quantity. This is a perfectly valid goal, and indeed is the road to riches. Ford was much more successful than Bugatti, but I do not think people confuse this with the quality of the cars. Just because BMW does not have a 90% market share does not mean that Ford makes better cars today. If your goal is to have companies like Microsoft use Ada, then fine, you can emphasize that Ada can hold its own just fine in environments like this from a technical point of view, but realistically, it will be non-technical factors that govern the choice in an environment like Microsoft, where software reliability is not a primary goal (time to market and fancy features are much more important in that market). Sometimes I wonder whether typical PC software is not a repeat of the red delicious apple debacle (where the suppliers thought that what consumers wanted was a nice looking apple and they succeeded, unfortunately, people are not actually buying them because they were also looking for a nice tasting apple. You and I as tax payers are about to lauch one of the biggest bailouts of its kind in history to rescue that industry). In the PC World, people are simply accustomed to unrealiable software that does strange things and breaks all the time. One of the most remarkable bugs of all time was the bug in Windows 95 that caused it to realiable crash after a few days, but no one noticed, because this crash just appeared to be normal operation in the unlikely event that you could keep your Windows 95 machine running that long. Where Ada *is* succesful is in large scale projects requiring high reliability. This is NOT an area in which the supposed success of Microsoft in the software field is necessarily such a clear plus :-) A very interesting view of the future is that high reliability software will become more important. For example, the ebay application is certainly not safety critical, but it is worth literally billions of dollars, in that if it fails, the stock of ebay can take a hit at this level (and indeed has on more than one occasion). The resources certainly exist at ebay to create a completely reliable system. What does not exist is an awareness that this is achievable. Now of course Ada is not a magic bullet for achieving reliability, sufficiently incompetent programmers can create junk in any language, and sufficiently competent programmers can create reliable software in absolute machine language (e.g. the inner core executive of the ICL 1900 series machines). But Ada, and the philosophy that surrounds Ada *can* be significant aids in achieving realiability. I think it is ultimately a more successful path for pushing Ada use to emphasize the role that Ada can play in improving reliability, rather than trying to make the point that it can work well in the current world of get-it-out-the-door, working-more-or-less-is-all-that-matters software delivery. (a recent thread on whether "works OK" is the most important aspect of software performance is relevant here). Robert Dewar Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.