Re: Ada in Iraq

[Wesley Parish <wes.parish@paradise.net.nz>]

Anders Wirzenius wrote:

> "Russ" <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote in message
> news:bebbba07.0304241712.698fbc85@posting.google.com...
>> 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote in message
>> news:<bebbba07.0304230951.59468757@posting.google.com>...
>> 
> 
>> First, there is no in-house large-scale Ada application development
>> experience among the software developers or civil servants.  We can't
>> wait around while 40 developers come up speed. Furthermore, i'll be
>> blunt and say there was "little" in-house C++  experience when the
>> **** was redesigned and we're still paying the price for that
> 
> How about eating the elefant piece by piece? Perhaps he can wait around
> while 2 developers come up speed? Perhaps he can afford some paying for
> 2 developers inexperience in using Ada? That's roughly 5 per cent of the
> total of 40 developers. It is not more than what could be a later accepted
> fall behind of the project schedule.
> There might also be a possibility to develop a small part of the system in
> both C and Ada as two concurrent projects? And then do some safety and
> efficincy measures on the two versions (and skip the version with
> lower quality).
> 
> Anders
If I remember correctly, there's a few free GPS clients lying around with 
source code, and if my guess is correct, they'll be written in C or C++.

That's the baseline - now rewrite them in Ada and display the efficiency 
difference to said manager.  You should be able to fix up a workable - if 
elementary - TCAS from a GPS client, the network protocol and a good 
scientific library.

(Decomposition:
TCAS: ATNetwork socket; GPS client; Scientific library routines for 
geodesics (3d Trig) and Linear Programming (what is a collision avoidance 
system but a glorified Linear Programming problem, anyway?); a set of User 
IO for flight crew, ATC, other aircraft;
the AT network and GPS are data pipes; the network is IO while the GPS is 
Input; the scientific libraries are functions taking in data from the 
network socket and the GPS and spitting out flight paths according to the 
data input, and possibilities of collision and dangerous proximity; the 
User IO gives warning to the flight crew and sends it off to other aircraft 
and a record of the actions to the ATC.)

Now you've got a basis for a hard real-time benchmark to test against the 
C/C++/Java competition.

Have fun.

Wesley Parish