Re: Admiral Tuttle

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Paul N. Hilfinger]

Admiral Tuttle's remarks contain at least one odd comment:

In article <1993Jul6.203058.4738@oracorp.com>, davidg@oracorp.com (David Guaspa
ri) writes:

> ADA  does  not  effectively  support object-oriented
> programming  --  distributed  computing -- and massively parallel processors
> now  --  and  ADA  9X  will  not  provide  many  capabilities already widely
> available through C++ and parallel implementations of C.

I was not aware that any capabilities are "WIDELY available" through
"parallel implementations" of C (I presume he means "implementations
of C with extensions supporting parallelism").  What is he referring
to here?

Also, what are the capabilities he refers to that Ada 9X will not
provide?  I am particularly curious about what HE is referring to, not
what others of us might answer to the question "What is Ada 9X
missing?"

Paul Hilfinger

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Gregory Aharonian]

    Let's see, Admiral Tuttle says Ada has not evolved, cannot evolve
rapidly enough to provide timely acess to the best new methods, Ada does
not support OO programming, distributed computing, parallel processing, 
will not provide many capabilities already widely available through C++,
use of other fourth generation languages should be encouraged, etc.

    In the words of John Belushi,  EEEEEEXXXXXXXCCCCCCCCUUUUUUSSSSSEEEEE ME!
I guess the grapevine stories I have heard about the Navy being against
Ada are true.  Let's see, since ARPA has long argued that the Ada Mandate
law does not apply to them and have been funding non-Ada stuff 10 to 1 over
Ada stuff, it safe to conclude that in the language turf wars, ARPA will
be against Ada.  It now appears that the Navy will be joining ARPA.
At best, we have ARPA and the Navy battling against the Army and the Air
Force.

    Who will win?  Right now my money is on the ARPA/Navy coalition, for
the following reasons.  ARPA is pretty much unified in its disinterest to
Ada, except for its being forced to oversee the STARS program (which given
the waste there with things like ASSET makes me believe this is a ploy by
ARPA against Ada), since there is little Ada can offer to the software
research programs ARPA funds.  I think the Navy is growingly more unified
in its disinterest to Ada, based on the private email I get from managers
who deal with Navy program managers.  Also, if you remember the Ada/C++
studies of 1991, the Naval Postgraduate School's substudy was the most
critical of the Ada claims made by the other substudies.  Also the Navy's
ALS experiences probably left a bad taste.  So I see a strong position in
the dump Ada camp.
    On the Air Force / Army side, I do see many public accounts of successes
with Ada and a fair amount of pro-Ada commentary from higher ups in these
two services.  However, most of the non-Ada programming language success
stories I see in the public press come out of the Air Force and Army. And
to be honest, as much as I respect AFIT, a major training ground for Air
Force officers, as measured by their language use in theses, Ada has not
been overwhelming embraced.

    If Tuttle's comments reflect a growing feeling inside the Navy, while
ARPA continues its apathy policies towards Ada, and with pre-RIF soldiers
worrying about future job prospects in the C/C++ marketplace, all it will
take will be for a major defection in the Air Force/Army camp to tip the
Pentagon balance against Ada in a significant enough way to be the
beginning of the end for the Mandate. (I can't see where the defection
will come from - things are too cloudly right now).

    To be really, truly, ethically honest, I have to confess that I actually
kidnapped Admiral Tuttle on the way to his speech, put on a very high tech
costume (along the lines of "Total Recall") supplied to me by ARPA, and gave
this very undermining-to-Ada speech  :-)   The Navy is solidly behind Ada.
-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian
 Source Translation & Optimization
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Ka rl S Mathias]

srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:

>    On the Air Force / Army side, I do see many public accounts of successes
>with Ada and a fair amount of pro-Ada commentary from higher ups in these
>two services.  However, most of the non-Ada programming language success
>stories I see in the public press come out of the Air Force and Army. And
>to be honest, as much as I respect AFIT, a major training ground for Air
>Force officers, as measured by their language use in theses, Ada has not
>been overwhelming embraced.

This is incorrect.  Ada enjoys extensive use at AFIT and is used in all
applicable computer science courses.  It should be noted that thesis
work at AFIT, as in any graduate school, is concerned with new ideas and
concepts.  Neither Ada, C++, or any other language is always at the
forefront of a research area.  We select the best appropriate tools to
do our research and carry the concepts we learn away with us.  If we can
do it in C we can do it in Ada/C++/Lisp/Prolog/<insert a language>.  It is the
idea that is of primary importance in research, not implementation.
In general AFIT does not do product development, so the use of
Ada is not mandatory in most cases.  It shouldn't seem so odd then to see 
research theses using C, C++, Lisp, Prolog, Refine, and Ada coming 
out of AFIT.  

My thesis is the development of a theater level wargame, written in Ada,
that uses an X-Windows based front-end, also written in Ada.  That it is
written in Ada is not so important as that I am advancing important
concepts in developing reusable wargame components that can be executed
on a workstation instead of a mainframe.  You might be interested to
know that I am reusing an object-oriented database written for another
system (also written in Ada).

These views represent my own opinions and are not necessarily those of
the Air Force Institute of Technology or the Department of the Air
Force.


Capt Karl Mathias                                  kmathias@afit.af.mil
Graduate Student, Air Force Institute of Technology

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Pat Rogers]

In article <1993Jul6.203058.4738@oracorp.com> davidg@oracorp.com (David Guaspar
i) writes:

>Apologies if some version of this message has already been posted to
>this group without my noticing it.  This comes from a Responsible
>Party, so I assume it's accurate.  I've omitted the Party's name only
>because I wasn't explicitly told to not to.  I know nothing about
>Admiral Tuttle or the SEW Technical Conference.  
>
>------- Forwarded Message
>

 [much verbage deleted]

>Object-oriented methods  have  proven  effective  for  development  of large
>industrial  applications  and  have  features  well  suited  to  our goal of
>software reuse.  We are already employing networks of distributed computers,
>and  the next generation desktop machines will almost certainly be massively
>parallel  processors.   ADA  does  not  effectively  support object-oriented
>programming  --  distributed  computing -- and massively parallel processors
>now  --  and  ADA  9X  will  not  provide  many  capabilities already widely
>available through C++ and parallel implementations of C.
>

It would appear that Adm. Tuttle's speech writer is less than well informed.
Ada supports object-oriented programming very well, as defined by those who
care about encapsulation, abstraction and information-hiding.  Certainly
the language does not support inheritance-oriented programming very
well, but I like the 9X approach better than that of C++.  As for support
for distributed programming, there are at least two vendors with products
supporting distribution, and we implemented embedded distributed Ada way
back there in 1991 (available thru Wright-Pat AFB).  As for parallel
processing, Concurrent C is the only version of C that is even close to
the support offered by Ada, and it is not exactly widely used.  The
common C++ library approaches I have seen are limited to supporting
coroutines -- hardly appropriate for massively parallel architectures.
No, Ada 83/9X is'nt/won't be pefect. I just wish those who address
technical topics would do their homework.

pat rogers
progers@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu
These opinions are my own (who else would want them). I am in no way
affiliated with the AJPO, the SEI or CMU.

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Jam es Olsen]

In article 4738@oracorp.com, davidg@oracorp.com (David Guaspari) writes:

>The following  is  an excerpt from Adm. Tuttle's remarks at the Second Annual
>SEW  Technical  Conference  on 4 May 1993...
>
>We should  reexamine  our software policies and standards with a view toward
>removal  of  impediments to the use of the best current industrial tools and
>practices.

It has been my experience that the problem with adoption of tools (lower-case
anyway) is brought about by the Ada library mechanism.  A standard set of tools
I have will work fine with most languages such as C, FORTRAN, Pascal etc but wi
ll
not operate with Ada because of those strange things I know nothing about that 
the
compiler stores away in hidden files.

Ada development however does still follow the author, compile, link process.
What about doing away with the afore-to-mentioned funny bits and just
treating the code like you would for any other language?  Or am I being too nai
ve,
will this cause even longer compile times?  Comments please.

>Our single
>chosen  language,  ADA  has not evolved, and cannot evolve rapidly enough to
>provide timely access to the best new methods.

I recently read a description of Ada9X and personally believe you'd have to be
mad to use anything else.  Perhaps I've been maintaining other peoples non-Ada
code too long.  I can wait till end of 94.

>Secondly, I  have  recommended to the Chief of Naval Research a focus in the
>computer  technology techbase on technologies directed toward specifying and
>producing correct, supportable and timely software.  As most costly software
>faults are introduced during specification and early design, I have selected
>this phase of development for special early emphasis.

Great!  Specify it then write it in the most appropriate language.  Sometimes
Ada.

>Once available,  these  specification  languages  --  automated verification
>tools  --  and  advanced  prototyping  techniques  must be made available to
>software  developers.  These new methods and the COTS software that supports
>them must be fully supported in policy and procedure.

Are we going to mandate specification languages now?  This hasn't been very
successful for programming languages.

If Ada needs better tool support then let's make it easier to do.  As I said
before, most of my tools don't care what language they're working with unless
it's Ada - Can this be changed?

----------------------------------------------------
James Olsen, Lt RNZN   email: jolse@dswe.navy.mil.nz
telephone: +64-4-4960-725  facsimile: +64-4-4960-311
----------------------------------------------------
My opinions are not necessarily those of my employer
----------------------------------------------------

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[Wes Groleau X7574]

In article <1993Jul7.170414.21988@sei.cmu.edu> progers@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Pat Ro
gers) writes:
>It would appear that Adm. Tuttle's speech writer is less than well informed.

That's an understatement!

>No, Ada 83/9X is'nt/won't be pefect. I just wish those who address
>technical topics would do their homework.

Yes, Admiral Tuttle obviously needs a little education. Preceding sentence has
been edited to remove flames :-)

However, as a former sailor (13 years) and Navy contractor (8 years), I
must regrettably remind you that Admirals tend to get their way.

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[David Emery]

Frankly, I'm happy that the good Admiral views Ada as a Model-T, and
not a Duesenberg.  After all, we've been accused of 'gold-plating'
requirements, and it's nice to know that at least Admiral Tuttle
recognizes that Ada, like the Model-T, meets its requirements and
provides reliable service at a very affordable price.  I'm
particularly happy he recognizes the maintenance advantages of Ada, as
the Model-T was one of the cheapest cars to keep running.  (Have you
ever considered what it must have cost to maintain a Duesenberg!?!?)

				dave
p.s.  The Model-T also follows the Navy paint paradigm:  You can paint
your ship any color you want, as long as it's Battleship grey.  The
Navy has recognized the benefits of standardization for both paint and
computer languages (e.g. CMS-2.)

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[agate!overload.lbl.gov!dog.ee.lbl.gov!network.ucsd.edu!munnari.oz.au!news]

srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:

>I guess the grapevine stories I have heard about the Navy being against
>Ada are true.

The Navy people I've met who are "against Ada" just don't want to rewrite
existing systems from scratch. Tuttle, on the other hand, wants to rewrite
them in C, which would be in many ways a backwards step from CMS-2.

And I believe he said last year that he wanted to junk all the existing
embedded systems hardware and recode everything to use commercial
computers. So he's made this sort of statement before.

Sean Case
(I don't work for ANU, and I don't speak for my employers.)
--
Sean Case                                              gsc@coombs.anu.edu.au
"Oh, why must it always be enjoyment for us? Can't we suffer--can't we go on
suffering, forever and ever? Maskull, until love crushes our spirit, finally
and without remedy, we don't begin to feel ourselves."--A Voyage to Arcturus

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com]

In <EMERY.93Jul8144338@goldfinger.mitre.org> emery@goldfinger.mitre.org (David 
Emery) writes:

>p.s.  The Model-T also follows the Navy paint paradigm:  You can paint
>your ship any color you want, as long as it's Battleship grey.  The
>Navy has recognized the benefits of standardization for both paint and
>computer languages (e.g. CMS-2.)

Uh, that's Haze Gray; battleship gray is something slightly different,
and I don't believe it is in use anymore.  And they don't *have* to be
that color.  I've served on white ones.  The white ones are
recognition by the Navy that sometimes function is more important than
blindly following a standard.


-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!The-Star.honeywell.com!]

In article <1993Jul9.164354.9986@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (f
red j mccall 575-3539) writes:

>recognition by the Navy that sometimes function is more important than
>blindly following a standard.

Wheeee-haaahaaaahaaaaa!!! 

(Sounds of hysterical laughter, then of me wiping the streaming tears
off of my face, with frequent lapses into giggles and snorts)

THAT certainly makes the Navy unique among the (US) armed forces. Thanks
for sharing tha...mmmphphhhhtBWAAAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAA......

Mark Shanks
USAF Academy '76

Re: Admiral Tuttle

[cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!ajpo.sei.cmu.edu!wellerd]

In article <C9u00x.Jx3@dswe.navy.mil.nz> jolse@dswe.navy.mil.nz writes:
>It has been my experience that the problem with adoption of tools (lower-case
>anyway) is brought about by the Ada library mechanism.  A standard set of tool
s
>I have will work fine with most languages such as C, FORTRAN, Pascal etc but w
ill
>not operate with Ada because of those strange things I know nothing about that
 the
>compiler stores away in hidden files.

C, FORTRAN, and Pascal don't store semantic information about your code.
This is one of the features that makes Ada so different from other languages.
What it translates into is that you discover interfacing problems during
compile-time, rather than run time.  

The Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) should relieve the problem
you're talking about, at least between vendors of Ada compilers.  I believe
there is more information about the ASIS in the FAQ or anonymous ftp to
ajpo.sei.cmu.edu.

-- 
-Comments above aren't neceessarily the opinion of the SEI, AJPO, or CAE-Link-
David Weller  |  Have you hugged your DRAGOON lately?
----I'm the Ultimate International Masochist: I speak Ada AND Esperanto!-----