From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_20 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 17 Aug 93 18:43:25 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Strassman says Ada is not cost effective Message-ID: List-Id: >>From the August 16, 1993 issue of Military and Aerospace Electronics, page 19 Tuttle is not the only respected member of the defense community who believes Ada falls short as the cure-all for the department's soaring software costs. Paul Strassman, former director of defense information in the Pentagon and now instructor of information warfare at the West Point, says Ada may not be the cost saver its proponents claim it is. "The central issue is how do we get better defense for defense money, and Ada is not the golden bullet", says Strassman, who was executor of CIM until January 1993. "The economic driver really is software reuse", Strassman says. "The underlying reason for Ada originally was software reuse and software modularity. Today, by and large, software reuse is being driven by the fact that software objects are commercially available, and most of the software objects on the market are just no Ada objects. The world is not going the Ada way". Strassman, while offering that Ada does have its advantages, says the language may not be economically feasible in the long run. "Ada has real-time very highly specialized applications where many of the existing languages like C++ don't have dynamic capabilities". But when you go to the bulk of DoD applications, which are command and control and classic information systems, you increasingly have to depend on commercially available software to execute those systems. Ada was a great idea, and Ada may have specialized use, but the systems of the futre most likely will not be copiously populated by Ada code". ============================================================================== These sentiments probably explain why when he was in office, Strassman never mentioned Ada in interviews in the trade press - he didn't want to lie about his belief in the cost effectiveness of Ada. Can't wait to see the interviews of others in Ada office's when they retire. Strassman's comments also won't go over well in the corporate MIS world, given Strassman's original background in corporate MIS at Xerox. One look at his comments, and they will ignore Ada even more. -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian srctran@world.std.com Source Translation & Optimization 617-489-3727 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178