Evaporating Jovial

Evaporating Jovial

[Bob Wells #402]

G'day,
I have just been reading an article called "Aging Airways," by Gary Stix,
from the May 1994 issue of Scientific American and there is a quote in
the article that I was intrigued with.

I quote:

"Maintenance is becoming a black art. Parts are scarce. Old equipment has
to be cannibalized. Many of the technicians and support staff who were
schooled in the subtleties of 1960s vintage computers are retiring and
have not been replaced. 'There are very few programmers still competent in
Jovial," says Heinz Erzberger of the NASA Ames Research Center, referring
to a virtually extinct programming language used on some of the
air-traffic mainframes."

Is this true? Is there virtually no Jovial now being done?

BTW Happy New Year to everyone!

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Re: Evaporating Jovial

[Philip Brashear]

Addressing the question of whether JOVIAL is evaporating --

JOVIAL was, for some time, required by the Air Force for all onboard mission-
critical software, until the requirement was changed to Ada.  The language
(JOVIAL J73) was maintained by the Air Force and was standardized by 
MIL-STD-1589C (the latest version).  1589D was developed, but the Language
Control Board decided not to issue the new standard.  Maintenance of the
Air Force-sponsored compiler was discontinued a couple of years ago, and
I led the validation of the last version in 1993.  Thus, as a standardized,
validated, sponsored language, JOVIAL is dead.

HOWEVER, I still receive inquiries about the availability of JOVIAL compilers,
including a recent one from an Air Force maintenance organization that wanted
to transition its software to a UNIX host platform.  This wasn't J73, but the
(much) older J3 version of JOVIAL.  So far as I can tell, there's a LOT of
JOVIAL code on Air Force machines (including the B2, I've been told -- no,
that's not classified information or I wouldn't know about it).  Therefore,
there's a lot of maintenance.  I've also been told by a developer of JOVIAL
training courses that some overseas weapons customers are doing development
in JOVIAL.

Bottom line?  JOVIAL isn't dead.  Maybe nothing ever dies.

Phil Brashear
CTA INCORPORATED

Re: Evaporating Jovial

[Joe Rodnite]

The current issue (Dec 29) of Contract Employment Weekly had the following
breakdown of languages under Software Engineering:

Ada - 5
C or C++ - 10
JOVIAL - 4
unspecified - 17

Re: Evaporating Jovial

[Howard Verne]

Hell no, we do avionics SW and although we have transitioned most to Ada, there
is still a hell of a lot of J73.
.

Re: Evaporating Jovial

[Steve Wall]

In article <1995Jan3.085249.18567@sei.cmu.edu>, brashear@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu
(Philip Brashear) wrote:

> Addressing the question of whether JOVIAL is evaporating --
>> 
> Bottom line?  JOVIAL isn't dead.  Maybe nothing ever dies.
> 
Case in point:  The inertial platform for the self propelled howitzer
I work on is being modified for incorporation of a GPS receiver.
The code is in Jovial.  If this code was ever going to be maintained
by the Gov't we'd have specified Ada.

-- 
Steve Wall

Re: Evaporating Jovial

[Howard Verne]

Steve Wall <smwall@pica.army.mil> writes:
 
>Case in point:  The inertial platform for the self propelled howitzer
>I work on is being modified for incorporation of a GPS receiver.
>The code is in Jovial.  If this code was ever going to be maintained
>by the Gov't we'd have specified Ada.
 
WHen was the code originally written? I bet it was before production Ada
compilers were available. Since the government rearely maintains inertial
system software, is it really worth paying to have the entire program rewritten
in Ada???