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=0.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_50 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 29 May 93 04:50:26 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Rational Inc. touts C++ = Ada for large projects Message-ID: List-Id: 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 -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimization P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178