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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-25 05:37:13 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Date: 25 Apr 2003 05:37:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <9fa75d42.0304250437.38893d8c@posting.google.com> References: <8qkczsAcGcn+Ew83@nildram.co.uk> <3EA04A1E.CAFC1FEF@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0304221126.7112b7d5@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0304230439.55d28e70@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0304240503.54dbc5d1@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 32.97.239.26 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1051274232 15226 127.0.0.1 (25 Apr 2003 12:37:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Apr 2003 12:37:12 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:62653 comp.object:61943 comp.lang.ada:36529 misc.misc:13676 Date: 2003-04-25T12:37:12+00:00 List-Id: Tom Welsh wrote in message news:... > In article <9fa75d42.0304240503.54dbc5d1@posting.google.com>, soft-eng > writes > > > >If Ada projects had actually succeeded in producing good quality > >software, it would have been everywhere today. > > > Although I don't think this argument holds water, it raises an issue > which I think is very important. Perhaps the most important issue for > software development today. > > Observation suggests that good software products do not necessarily > become popular; and the methods and processes adopted in successful > software projects do not necessarily get widely imitated. Where do you get this? People in the industry adopt what they see succeeding. It's a feedback loop -- if a pilot C project in a company succeeds wildly, everybody in the company wants to do C projects. If this happens in many companies, C programmer demand goes up, salaries go up, more students learn C, then other managers have to use C because all college graduates know C... Of course, the feedback loop could go much faster and start fully grown in terms of rewards, if you have billions of dollars backing up some language. But Ada is proof that there has to be more than billions of dollars. There have to be _results_. > Why is this? Anecdotally, we have the old joke about how any project > failure is followed by steps including (but not limited to): > > * Punishment of the innocent; > * Promotion of the guilty; > * Scattering of the project team to the four winds; > > and (most significantly for our purposes) > > * Burying of the evidence. > > These steps are calculated to block dissemination of knowledge about > what works well, as opposed to what fails consistently. Feedback is > stifled, and learning prevented. > > How about successful projects? Well, for a start these are in a small > minority - partly because of the syndrome described above. Moreover, > some of the most strikingly successful projects are considered strategic > (whether in government or business) and are therefore kept secret. Once > again, the feedback loops are blocked and learning does not take place > on any significant scale. So you are saying the Ada projects that succeeded were secret, and the ones that were not secret did not succeed? I suppose then commercial interests were right in leaving Ada. Unless they were going to keep their projects secret, it would not have succeeded!! It's probably nothing to do with Ada -- the secret projects would have succeeded in any language because too much money was going to be thrown at them in secret. Believe it or not, before Ada the DoD had many successful projects in assembly language. That doesn't mean assembly language is the best tool. Of course, perhaps a non-Ada language could have cut the project costs and time to a quarter, but since the project was a secret, there wasn't anybody around to point it out, was there?