The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[Gregory Aharonian]

    The January 23rd edition of the Economist has an article on software
engineering with an interesting set of statistics.  The article discusses
the measuring of software complexity and productivity.  The metric discussed
is Albrecht's Function Points, which is based on measuring the inputs, the
outputs, inquiries, files and interfaces, each of the five with a different
weight.  Function Points are popular in the MIS world, especially with Cobol
programs, though they are now being applied to other languages with TI and
Unisys (ironic) offering commercial products.

    The article ends by reporting on results of analyzing 1000's of US and
foreign software projects by Caper Jones at Software Productivity Research
(whose software cost estimating tools are popular with the DoD), with the
following table presented:

		TABLE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY (1991)

	MIS SOFTWARE		SYSTEMS SOFTWARE	MILITARY SOFTWARE

1	America			Japan			France
2	France			America			Israel
3	Britain			Germany			South Korea
4	Canada			France			Britain
5	Switzerland		Britain			Germany
6	Germany			India			Sweden
7	Japan			Taiwan			Italy
8	Norway			South Korea		AMERICA
9	Sweden			Holland			Brazil
10	India			Sweden			Egypt

    Even accounting for a sampling problem in the survey, this is a truly
embarassing performance for the US military software community (I mean
being between Italy and Brazil only counts in lambada competitions).
    How many more outside critiques is it going to take for the DoD to
realize its software policies and initiatives are giving America a lousy
return for our tax dollars?  You might not believe us clowns, but groups like
the GAO and the Economist staff cannot be so easily ignored.  With four DoD
software reuse efforts, and at least three DoD CASE efforts (STARS, KBSA and
one from DARPA I can't find a name for), with tens of millions of dollars
being spent annually over the last five years, how did America end up in
8th place for military software productivity?  The waste of duplicative
efforts is only tolerable if at least one succeeds.  This table seems to
suggest not.

    And since most of the non-mandated world associates Ada with military
software, those in management (many of whom read the Economist) are going
to assume, rightly or wrongly, that Ada is not worth getting into, and that
Ada 9X is more of the same.  If this table was not discussed at last week's
Ada conference, it only goes to show the gross indifference of the Mandated
world to anything else.

    But hey, you see right through me and realize that I made this up just
to be harassing, that I bribed the Economist staff to publish material
detrimental to the pride of US military software development, that I go
around spreading flouride into public water systems.  Yes, yes its me.

    How about for one day we have an open day on comp.lang.ada, where
everyone can post anything without fear of losing job or contract.  If its
anything like the private email I get, it will be a blast (and truly make
the stuff Ted and I post look amateurish).


Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization

-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[Christophe Bruniau]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Mar23001245@world.std.com>, srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
|> 
|>     The January 23rd edition of the Economist has an article on software
|> engineering with an interesting set of statistics.
....
|> 
|>     The article ends by reporting on results of analyzing 1000's of US and
|> foreign software projects by Caper Jones at Software Productivity Research
|> (whose software cost estimating tools are popular with the DoD), with the
|> following table presented:
|> 
|> 		TABLE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY (1991)
|> 
|> 	MIS SOFTWARE		SYSTEMS SOFTWARE	MILITARY SOFTWARE
|> 
|> 1	America			Japan			France
|> 2	France			America			Israel
|> 3	Britain			Germany			South Korea
|> 4	Canada			France			Britain
|> 5	Switzerland		Britain			Germany
|> 6	Germany			India			Sweden
|> 7	Japan			Taiwan			Italy
|> 8	Norway			South Korea		AMERICA
|> 9	Sweden			Holland			Brazil
|> 10	India			Sweden			Egypt
|> 
|>     Even accounting for a sampling problem in the survey, this is a truly
|> embarassing performance for the US military software community (I mean
|> being between Italy and Brazil only counts in lambada competitions).
...
|>     And since most of the non-mandated world associates Ada with military
|> software, those in management (many of whom read the Economist) are going
|> to assume, rightly or wrongly, that Ada is not worth getting into, and that
|> Ada 9X is more of the same.  If this table was not discussed at last week's
|> Ada conference, it only goes to show the gross indifference of the Mandated
|> world to anything else.

Ada is ALSO strongly associated with French military software.
The majority of military systems are developped with Ada in France.

It ALSO seems that an important part of Israelian software is developped in Ada.

I think you should better investigate for management problems, instead of
 always trying to make Ada responsible for all the software development
 problems.
As you see, like in the Air Traffic Control domain, there may be differences
 due to the way projects are managed, not only the tools given for production.
These ones are more involved in the global quality of the resulting product
(reliability, maintainability, and so on...).


Christophe BRUNIAU  bruniau@cenatls.cena.dgac.fr

Re: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[Gary Funck]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Mar23001245@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
> ...
>		TABLE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY (1991)
>
>	MIS SOFTWARE		SYSTEMS SOFTWARE	MILITARY SOFTWARE
>
>1	America			Japan			France
>2	France			America			Israel
>3	Britain			Germany			South Korea
>4	Canada			France			Britain
>5	Switzerland		Britain			Germany
>6	Germany			India			Sweden
>7	Japan			Taiwan			Italy
>8	Norway			South Korea		AMERICA
>9	Sweden			Holland			Brazil
>10	India			Sweden			Egypt
>

France, Germany, Sweden, and Britain all use Ada much more extensively
than the US.  They also seem somehow more serious than the US at
building truly reliable/useable things.  And they seem more
comfortable with Ada.  Perhaps their early adoption of Algol,
followed by Pascal laid the groundwork.

So if the problem isn't Ada, then what is the problem?

-- 
| Gary Funck  		    gary@intrepid.com  [uunet!uupsi!intrepid!gary]
| Intrepid Technology Inc., Mountain View CA (415) 964-8135
--

Re: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[Alex Blakemore]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Mar23001245@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
> 		TABLE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY (1991)
 
> 	MIS SOFTWARE		SYSTEMS SOFTWARE	MILITARY SOFTWARE
> 1	America			Japan			France
  .
  .
  .
> 8	Norway			South Korea		AMERICA

correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't France embraced Ada while much
of America's DoD is still resisting it every step of the way?
-- 
---------------------------------------------------
Alex Blakemore alex@cs.umd.edu   NeXT mail accepted

Re: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[Gregory Aharonian]

>I think you should better investigate for management problems, instead of
> always trying to make Ada responsible for all the software development
> problems.

   Actually, if you closely read what I posted, and my other postings, I both
don't blame the Ada language itself for many DoD software problems and, like
the language and recommends it use (otherwise I wouldn't have wasted a lot
of my own money trying to start an Ada software reuse business).  In fact,
one of the most clearly understood Prolog interpreter I ever saw was written
in Ada.
   My concerns always have been the unbusiness-like way the DoD runs the Ada
software business.  The day the Mandate goes away is the day I go away from
posting to comp.lang.ada.  Until then, someone has to accept responsibility
for such dismal ratings as the Economist article implies.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization


-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place

[David Emery]

As a taxpayer, I am concerned about productivity, as a (part-time)
soldier, I am much more concerned about capability.  The U.S. may not
be a leader in softare productivity, but I personally think that's
because we're so far ahead of the rest of the world that they get the
advantage of learning from our mistakes.  There's no real equivalent
to our Cheyenne Mountain systems, or our Aegis system, not to mention
our lead in avionics and smart weapons, *all* of which are software
intensive technologies.  

So I'll accept being in 8th place in productivity, as long as we
remain in first place in applications of the technology.
				dave
p.s.  I'm not trying to be a "jingoistic American" here, and denigrate
the capabilities of other countries.  In particular, I have a lot of
respect for Swedish defense products, as well for some British, French
and German systems.