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=1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e7992c59d4c134e9,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-23 05:11:56 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: sparky!uunet!world!srctran From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: The Economist says: US Military software in 8th place Message-ID: Sender: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Organization: The World Distribution: comp.lang.ada,comp.software-eng Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 05:12:45 GMT Date: 1993-03-23T05:12:45+00:00 List-Id: The January 23rd edition of the Economist has an article on software engineering with an interesting set of statistics. The article discusses the measuring of software complexity and productivity. The metric discussed is Albrecht's Function Points, which is based on measuring the inputs, the outputs, inquiries, files and interfaces, each of the five with a different weight. Function Points are popular in the MIS world, especially with Cobol programs, though they are now being applied to other languages with TI and Unisys (ironic) offering commercial products. The article ends by reporting on results of analyzing 1000's of US and foreign software projects by Caper Jones at Software Productivity Research (whose software cost estimating tools are popular with the DoD), with the following table presented: TABLE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY (1991) MIS SOFTWARE SYSTEMS SOFTWARE MILITARY SOFTWARE 1 America Japan France 2 France America Israel 3 Britain Germany South Korea 4 Canada France Britain 5 Switzerland Britain Germany 6 Germany India Sweden 7 Japan Taiwan Italy 8 Norway South Korea AMERICA 9 Sweden Holland Brazil 10 India Sweden Egypt Even accounting for a sampling problem in the survey, this is a truly embarassing performance for the US military software community (I mean being between Italy and Brazil only counts in lambada competitions). How many more outside critiques is it going to take for the DoD to realize its software policies and initiatives are giving America a lousy return for our tax dollars? You might not believe us clowns, but groups like the GAO and the Economist staff cannot be so easily ignored. With four DoD software reuse efforts, and at least three DoD CASE efforts (STARS, KBSA and one from DARPA I can't find a name for), with tens of millions of dollars being spent annually over the last five years, how did America end up in 8th place for military software productivity? The waste of duplicative efforts is only tolerable if at least one succeeds. This table seems to suggest not. And since most of the non-mandated world associates Ada with military software, those in management (many of whom read the Economist) are going to assume, rightly or wrongly, that Ada is not worth getting into, and that Ada 9X is more of the same. If this table was not discussed at last week's Ada conference, it only goes to show the gross indifference of the Mandated world to anything else. But hey, you see right through me and realize that I made this up just to be harassing, that I bribed the Economist staff to publish material detrimental to the pride of US military software development, that I go around spreading flouride into public water systems. Yes, yes its me. How about for one day we have an open day on comp.lang.ada, where everyone can post anything without fear of losing job or contract. If its anything like the private email I get, it will be a blast (and truly make the stuff Ted and I post look amateurish). Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimization -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimiztion P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178