Rational Inc. touts C++ = Ada for large projects

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

    I have long argued that except for very large programming projects,
Ada is not the most cost effective language to use. Desktop computing,
parallel processing, AI, distributed databases, whatever technology,
there is too much available in C/C++.
    However, up until quite recently, I was willing to concede that for
large (say >100,000 LOC efforts, that Ada is the most cost-effective.
I listened to many good arguments on comp.lang.ada, read many good
articles in Ada Letters, and thought that the arguments made sense.
    That is, until I saw a paper from the company with the best Ada
CASE tools, arguing that C++ is just as cost effective for large scale
projects.  Oh, my shattered innocence, my tears in the wildnerness,
my loss of self and purpose (hey you guys don't like my nastiness, let
me try to wax poetic).

    At the 1992 OOPSLA conference, one James Walsh of Rational presented
a paper with the following abstract:

		"PRELIMINARY DEFECT DATA FROM THE ITERATIVE"
		     DEVELOPMENT OF A LARGE C++ PROGRAM

       Preliminary results from the development of Rational Rose,
       a large ( > 100 KLOC ) program written in C++, suggest
       that high product quality can be achieved during a
       telescoped development schedule through the use of an
       iterative-development methodology.  Data on defect density
       and discovery rate gathered on one phase of Rose development
       implies a low error rate in code delivered for functional
       test and supports 80-20 defect clustering, 80-20 distribution
       of noncritical versus critical defects, an association of
       defects detected during functional test with depth in the
       subsystem hierarchy, and the utility of data on rates of
       defect discovery for C++ programs.

==============================================================================

    Look, when the largest Ada contractor, IBM, for the past three years,
has publicly touted only C++ and Smalltalk, and when the best Ada compiler
and CASE company, Rational, argues that for very large projects that C++
is also very cost effective, the public perception in the non-Mandated
world (for those who care to even consider Ada) is that the language is
surrounded by too much hypocrisy.  You cannot tell your customers in the
Mandated world one story, and for the same exact problem, tell your
customers in the non-Mandated world another story.

    If I can't appeal to your ethics, consider this - it's going to be
difficult to get a job in the private sector as the DoD downsizes if you
are associated with this stuff.

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