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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1ba8c21ddfbe0b1e,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-30 08:16:37 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: nntp.gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news2.near.net!news3.near.net!noc.near.net!inmet!asp!mg From: mg@asp.camb.inmet.com (Mitch Gart) Subject: "Subtract C, add Ada" Message-ID: Sender: news@inmet.camb.inmet.com Organization: Intermetrics, Inc. X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8] Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 16:06:08 GMT Date: 1994-12-30T16:06:08+00:00 List-Id: In the Dec. 12 PC Week, next to the review of Alsys ActivAda, was this sidebar by Peter Coffee: Subtract C, add Ada: Results multiply ------------------------------------- Few managers can afford to do a software project several times, using teams with similar experience but different programming tools, to see if anything yields consistent improvements in speed or quality of work. At the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, though, Professor John McCormick has assigned the same project to each of his classes for about nine years, but switched languages in mid-decade. Working in teams of three or four, McCormick's real-time-programming students must write 15,000 lines of code to control a system that would need about 150 switches to operate using hardware alone. In the five years students used C, no team completed the project - even when more than half of the code was provided. With Ada, however, half of the teams completed the project before any support code had even been written. With some support code now provided, three out of four teams finish the project. Specific factors in this improvement, according to McCormick, include both syntax and semantics. Ada leaves less room for single-keystroke errors, such as the common C error of using = (assignment) instead of == (comparison); its type-abstraction facilities reduce the need for error-prone pointer manipulation; and its modular facilities improve teams' coordination of effort. This experience, McCormick notes, "has convinced all my faculty colleagues to support teaching Ada in our beginning courses. This spring semester, the first studentw with Ada as their mother tongue will enroll in my course. I can only imagine what these teams will accomplish".