Re: Data shows Top 50 Software Vendors not using Ada

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!nic.umass.edu!ymir.cs.umass.edu !rcfnews!sandy@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Sandy Wise)]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Jun3232913@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:
 > You know, one of the most obnoxious conceits of the Defense
 > world is that it has the worst real time, fault tolerant, large
 > scale computing problems.  There are plenty of industries using the
 > tools and products of the 50 companies I listed whose problems are
 > just as bad as the DoD's.

There are organizations outside the Pentagon with mission-critical
software systems out there, but the Pentagon's systems are
life-critical.  Failing to make a trade or double-booking a seat on an
airplane just isn't in the same class... To compare apples to apples
you need to talk about patient monitoring, railroad signalling, or
something...

 >     Consider Wall Street. Their systems can't break down during the
 > trading day, their algorithms have to handle all market exceptions,
 > etc.

Which of course explains why the SEC shuts down programmed trading
whenever the market acts up.  And of course there was a recent
incedent where the market management software failed and trading had
to be done with paper records.  Might not have happened if...

 > How about airlines.  A few months ago, Business Week had a glowing
 > article about Smalltalk,in which a large Smalltalk system developed
 > by American Airlines handles their daily scheduling activities.
 > Screw up one connection,

How about airlines.  The new ATC system is being written in...
Boeing is writing the flight software for its new passenger aircraft
in...

      The phone systems - real time, high throughput, even help fight a few
   wars with the DoD - all done in C.  Remember the invasion of Grenada?

Remember the Northeast long-distance blackout? It was directly
attributed to the semantics of 'break'.
        /s
--
Alexander Erskine Wise /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Software Development Laboratory
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ WISE@CS.UMASS.EDU /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\ This situation calls for large amounts of unadulterated CHOCOLATE! /\/\/\