Yep, the Russians too...

Yep, the Russians too...

[Michael Feldman]

Thought you might be interested in this. Darren Davenport of McDonnell-
Douglas sent me an article from Aviation Week & Space Technology. 6/7/93,
the first paragraph of which is as follows:

"The British-Russian Aviation Corp. has selected a suite of Rockwell Collins
avionics for the Tupolev TU-204 which is nearly identical to the glass
cockpit selected previously by Ilyushin for the IL-96M. Rockwell Collins
expects to sell complete cockpit equipment for as many as 200 TU-204s
and 200 IL-96Ms over a 10-year period...The two aircraft also are equipped
with Western engines. The TU-204 has Rolls-Royce RB211-535 engines and the
IL-96M has Pratt & Whitney PW2337s."
...
"All the software is being programmed using the Ada programming language
originally created by the U.S. Defense Dept...The Russian software engineers
were surprisingly well versed in Ada and even had a lot of Ada manuals 
already translated into Russian when the Rockwell Collins engineers first
arrived in Moscow."
...
"The IL96M will debut at the Paris air show and...should be certified by
1995 in the Commonwealth of Independent States and then by the U.S. FAA
under bilateral airworthiness agreements."
...
"The TU-204 is to be certified by Russian authorities in early 1996, to be
followed by U.S. certification in 1997."

I promised to avoid armchair analysis, so I'll let this speak for itself.

Hey - which country do I put this under in my list of non-defense projects?

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-5296 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Yep, the Russians too...

[pipex!uknet!gdt!aber!fronta.aber.ac.uk!pcg]

>>> On Mon, 14 Jun 1993 11:47:05 EDT, wellerd@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (David
>>> Weller) said:

David> Russia has been actively using Ada for many years, and has
David> recently chosen it as their language for government-supported
David> projects (sound familiar?).  It is becoming widely embraced by
David> the programming community throughout Russia (sound UNfamiliar?
David> :-)

It does not strike me as so strange, on reflection. The URSS CS culture
has always been centered around Algol-like languages, and Ada perhaps
looks to them sufficiently algolish.

Re: Yep, the Russians too...

[Wes Groleau X7574]

In article <PCG.93Jul1153640@decb.aber.ac.uk> pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
 writes:
>It does not strike me as so strange, on reflection. The URSS CS culture
>has always been centered around Algol-like languages, and Ada perhaps
>looks to them sufficiently algolish.

Please don't strike me if I have no reflection.  But I do not think Ada
looks at all ghoulish.