Re: Cooked cost-effectiveness

[enterpoop.mit.edu!world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian)]

Actually the long term cost effectiveness of Ada and the Mandate will always
be unknown for the following reasons:

	1) As the GAO reported a few years ago, there is no systematic
	   collection of comprehensive cost data for Ada projects inside
	   the DoD, a conclusion the DoD concurred with, and to date has
	   done little to address. Nor is there collection of background
	   socioeconomic data (such as processor throughput and desktop
   	   CPU power) that has to be factored out of the Ada cost data.
 
	2) There are no decent microeconomic models of defense software
	   development to use as a basis for analyzing the data collected.
	   In fact, data should not be collected until there is such a
	   model, otherwise you don't know what variables to measure.
	   As there is, and has been, no DoD interest in such models
	   (and I do not consider any modified form of COCOMO a suitable
	   basis for a microeconomic model, which some have argued),
	   the DoD is in the dark, except for ancedotal evidence.

	3) There are no groups independent of the DoD who know enough
	   about economics and defense software development to perform
	   a valid assessment of this question.  The Mosemann studies
	   are evidence of the crap you get when the DoD asks one of
	   its own to say how well the DoD is doing.

This is not to say that I don't believe that for some projects, Ada is
very cost effective.  I have seen a few private sector projects use Ada
very cost effectively.  Rather, I do not think anyone will be able to
specifically prove that the Ada mandate is cost effective.  Not that
anyone cares, especially when you have outrageous claims like the original
STARS claim to increase productivity ten-fold.   Any goal far enough in
the future, backed by a few uniforms, will be funded by Congress in under
a few tens of millions.  None of the originals will be around on judgment
day.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization

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