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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,33e793a459e66944 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Richard Riehle Subject: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?) Date: 1996/10/20 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 190869885 references: <01bbb6e2$6385d540$23b2fd86@jssmith.csu891.sandia.gov> content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII organization: National University, San Diego mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I am meeting more and more DoD managers and contractors who, at the management level, are concerned with whether Ada has the staying power required for them to select it for important projects. While many of them agree that Ada is probably superior to C++, that superiority may prove to be of marginal value when weighed against the availability of tools for C++, programmers in C++, and the myriad of other resources for C++. These managers are asking whether Ada will be around for the next ten years, and if it is, whether there will be cost-effective tools and compilers to make Ada a good business decision. They are convinced that C++ will not go away. And they believe that C++, with all of its liabilities, will continue to get better. This is a powerful argument. One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that the field has narrowed. Now name three software companies who provide testing tools for Ada. What about three providers of configuration management tools? What about other third-party tools? It is significant, I think, that so many compiler publishers are paying attention to the need for support of Microsoft Win32 platforms such as NT. But what about the other software companies who might be creating tools that work with these compilers? Perhaps I am simply encountering a lot of such criticism because of the kind of work I do. Maybe there are lots more program managers out there who are enthusiastically embracing Ada. Someone tell me, please, that I am simply worrying from too small a sample size. Richard Riehle