Re: Air Force helping to undermine Ada

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>I don't think you understood the product the USAF bought.  It requires
>integration with other products, customizations, and additions.  All of
>this work must* be done in C.  Since this work is programming, by buying
>a product which requires, C the USAF is (in a sense) mandating C for
>that integration, customization, and addition work. 
>
>If the USAF had required that the integration, etc. work be done in ADA,
>they would have gotten some other product.  Or, more likely, they would
>have had to pay someone to develop it all from scratch in ADA.

   Thus, in time it will be cheaper and cheaper (even with a warrranty for
maintenance and safety) for the DoD to have developed larger and larger
systems using COTS products and APIs, which all trends point to C/C++.
A 10,000 user system, which the specific project is, is a moderate to
large project within current definitions.  More success stories like these
will lead to the questioning of the Mandate inside the DoD, and probably
its eventual retraction.
    The Mandate world will be able to ignore the outside world for only
so long.

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