Re: is ada dead?

[byhoe@greenlime.com (Adrian Hoe)]

"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewandoREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote in message news:<3b47806a_4@news3.prserv.net>...
 
> You are in a good society. I was once teaching Real Time Programming and was
> using Ada. This was at not that bad U.S. University. Once, after the end of semester
> students brought to the Dean collection of Classified from local newspapers and
> asked him to find at least one job as that would require Ada. Dean was smart enough
> to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was
> smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C.
> 
> This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada
> programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL.
> Students invest quite substantial amount of money to get a degree, and yes, they
> expect that this investment will bring some return. Generally, there is little room
> to study for "scientific pleasure". They are studying to get skills that will position
> them well on the job market. They will not learn Ada just this is a "better language".
> They will study the language that is visible on the market.





One should study for knowledge and that is the ultimate goal. Today,
education has become very commercialized. Sometimes, good knowledge
was not passed on to students. Not teaching Ada is one of the example.
Students are taught what is deemed to be good for their future career
encounter. They have been capitalized. I believe that good programming
concept and habits should be taught and cultivated when they are still
in universities. Ada has been a good language for more than a decade
and it is still progressing and improving. Ada is a good language for
teaching good programming concept and cultivating good programming
habits, because Ada was built on-top of software engineering
philosophy and very discipline in various areas. Good concepts and
habits are most wanted in many companies.

My company, Lexical Integration, switched to Ada in 1995. We were
experiencing tremendous work load in maintaining source codes. We were
using C/C++ and others and we have more than 500K LOC at that time.
Today, we have surpassed 1 million LOC and is heading towards 2
million LOC and SEI levels. Without Ada, we could not imagine how
we're doing.

From our past employment statistics, 0 out of 10 new employees could
not make it through their first 3 months of employment learning Ada.
They dropped out! Reasons:

1.) C/C++ or/and Java is the only language(s) they learned in school.
It is very hard for them to accept different programming paradigm.
From their work (C/C++), it shows that no discipline and good concepts
are deployed in their codes.

2.) They never taught the complete SDLC process in school. They are
kind of "progrmmer-on-the-fly". Giving a programming task, they will
sit in front of workstations and begin working on codes.

Today, our minimum requirement is knowledge of Pascal if not Ada,
because Pascal is very similar to Ada (or Ada is very similar to
Pascal). Students with knowledge in Pascal is more likely to accept
Ada compare to students of C/C++/Java.

This is the scenario in Malaysia. In fact, we have not encountered any
local software company in Malaysia implements full SDLC. Malaysian
governmenr strives to become one of the world's software exporter and
companies, universities and instituitions coerced the motion. MSC,
Multimedia Super Corridor has been established for the purpose. This
is exactly as James Rogers posted:

"The river is a mile wide and an inch deep."

Will it be so bad for students who know just one more extra
programming language, Ada? If the answer is YES, why take all the
troubles studying? Some Universities shorten their courses from 4
years to 3 years and they are saying that they don't have time to
teach Ada!




> What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost
> of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say,
> Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure
> of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop
> one zero from their price list.




You pay ZERO $ for Ada compiler. One can download GNAT for free.
Company can consider to purchase support contract if they think they
need one. After building up their Ada expertise, they can go their
own. I think that the money spend now is worth for the future. We have
to look into the distant future and not the one near your nose. If we
(Lexical) were to save the 5 digits in 1995, I will bet that we are
not here today. (Staff turn-over rate was high before we switched to
Ada.)

Just my 2 cents worth.
Adrian