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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,19e983c5955f75f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-06 08:15:34 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!isdnet!psinet-france!psiuk-f4!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Learning Ada (newbie) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 10:53:14 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9akl8r$93g$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: <9af9ao$6ee$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9aiq8h$ik8$1@nh.pace.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 986568795 9328 136.170.200.133 (6 Apr 2001 14:53:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Apr 2001 14:53:15 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6568 Date: 2001-04-06T14:53:15+00:00 List-Id: Yes, but don't say "mere money". The *ONLY* reason I bother to show up here every morning (work, that is) and the *ONLY* reason they bother to open up the doors at all is because of money. If they stopped paying me, I'd be at home, working on The Great American Operating System. (Or out at the Juno Beach pier with a fishing stick in one hand and a cold one in in the other! Its definitely toooooo gorgeous here today to be at work!!! :-) If money stopped flowing in from customers, I doubt we'd be building our products out of charity or because it makes a cool hobby. So from the standpoint of making *business* decisions about what technology to use, Ada makes sense (sometimes) because the early detection of bugs makes them (sometimes substantially) less expensive to fix. (How much less depends on how long your turnaround time is to get a new version fielded. That's why I noted "sometimes".) Of course, there are other economic factors to consider such as infrastructure, knowledge base, tools, problem domain, etc. But with the standard issue "All Other Things Being Equal" qualifier, Ada is a money saver because of early error detection. I agree with your point that there are more important things in life than spending time chasing down stupid errors. Its a bad idea to sacrifice one's marriage in order to spend hours in the lab debugging stupid C errors. Of course, one's willingness to sign up for that on a consistent basis may be a sign that one enjoys midnight debugging sessions (puzzle solving? sense of self-importance?) and that's why one selects C instead of Ada. Either that, or one has a wife from whom time away is a relief. :-) MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Ted Dennison" wrote in message news:Hakz6.3384$jz.287874@www.newsranger.com... > In article <9aiq8h$ik8$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says... > > > >You might want to note that catching errors early is not just a matter of > >coolness or intellectual tidiness. It translates very directly into $$$$$ > >saved! (I'm currently doing a *lot* of C programming and getting quite > > That's very true, but I wouldn't even stop there. To a corporation time is > indeed money. But to you and me as developers it can be much more than that. We > have personal lives to live, and interpersonal relationships to nurture. > > Many times integration has to happen at a customer site, far from one's family. > If its a relatively quick and smooth integration, that's no big deal. It can > even bit kind of fun. But once it starts to get to be more than a couple of > weeks or so, it can start to put a big strain on people's personal > relationships. Thus pushing error-finding off into later phases of a project can > not only have monetary consequences, but social consequences as well. > > I had one very close friend whose marrige broke up as a direct result of the > exteneded separation imposed by integration of buggy C code. (One example of a > bug they found: An array out-of-bounds indexing error which would have at worst > immediately raised an exception in Ada, instead caused an odd intermittent > symptom 2 networked computers away. It took them 3 *weeks* to track it down.) I > had another close friend working on the same project with *5* young kids at > home, whose marriage very nearly broke up, again directly related to the > extended separation. Of course for you mercenary types, this also cost the > corporation even more money. For one thing, all that site time living in hotels, > etc., isn't cheap. For another, neither one of these valuable developers were > very productive at work for the next 4 months while they desperately tried to > get their personal lives back in order. But I'd argue that there were (and are) > more important issues at stake than meer money. > > --- > T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html > home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com