Re: AIA Position on Ada

["Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

"Byron B. Kauffman" <KauffmanBB@LMTAS.LMCO.COM> writes:
>Can anyone name a 'commercial standard' for software development? Should we use
>Microsoft's example of how commercial software is developed? I guess I
>shouldn't be
>suprised, given our company's 'official' stand, but it still bugs me...
>

    I believe there are some IEEE "standards" that relate to software
    development (I presume you're thinking of something that parallels
    Mil-Std-2167a?) But remember that a 'commercial standard' could
    mean something as simple as the documented development practices
    for your company. (All that ISO-9000, SEI-CMM type of stuff.)


>But on the brighter side, think of the money the company will be saving now by
>not having
>to spend all those hours coming up with excuses to justify an Ada waiver!!!
>
    I think it is truly a disgrace to see companies fight this thing.
    (STILL!) Ada has all the capabilities needed to write just about
    any kind of software you like and there are enough good quality
    compilers out there which are equal to or better than compilers
    for any other language. If the energy had been spent on building
    an "Ada Infrastructure" within a business (As we here at Pratt did
    years ago) instead of being spent on excuse-making and dodging the
    expressed desires of the customer, there would be no cause to
    argue that "Ada isn't as good as C because there's more C stuff
    out there..."

    BTW: The argument "there's more C stuff out there..." is the only
    semi-plausable business/engineering reason to think that "C is
    better than Ada...", in my not-so-humble opinion. In every other
    respect Ada is as good as or better than C and I have never heard
    any convincing engineering reason to select C over Ada.

    But then, this seems to be the way of things in a technological
    society. Beta was better than VHS - so VHS wins. VMS was better
    than UNIX, so UNIX wins. Macintosh was better than IBM-PC, so
    IBM-PC wins... etc. etc. etc.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        407.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   CONDIC@FLINET.COM
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