Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

An interesting article. One could argue about the accuracy of the survey,
but it probably isn't that far off from reality.

What I liked about it was that it was fair and balanced. It didn't smack of
the usual anti-Ada vitriol, nor was it filled with misinformation. The
criticism that Ada doesn't have as many tools as C/C++ is reasonably fair -
I think it is a better situation than the author seems to imply, but let's
face it: For just about any embedded board, you can get a C compiler thrown
in with the development kit & you won't find Ada riding along with it as an
alternate choice. (Although Gnat merging with gcc stands to help improve the
situation - but still people have to ask for it or nobody will bother.)

The question about programmers being "intellectually lazy" may have a lot to
do with it. In order to do Ada development in a way that maximizes the
benefits and minimizes the time fighting with the compiler to get it right,
requires that you spend time up front thinking about the organization of the
system - what the relevant data types are, what information should be
hidden, etc. Embedded developers tend to be tinkerers who want to start
hacking some bootstrap code and keep adding things to it until it works.
Weeks of planning and diagram drawing and design meetings prior to writing
any code tends to not be the thing they got into the business to do. Never
mind that it might save months/years of debugging and produce a more
reliable system that improved customer satisfaction and reduced liability -
that's just not the mode of thought that feels comfortable to your average
embedded/C developer.

The question at the end about the government being to blame for not sticking
to its guns is another interesting one. The government instituting "The
Mandate" (especially when compiler technology just wasn't there) probably
raised a lot of hackles over being "forced" to do something. (I *still*
think that had the government tried bribery instead of extortion, it might
have worked. If you were the program manager for some electronic whozits and
the government offered you a $100,000.00 bonus if only you could find a way
to get the project done in Ada, do you think your opposition to Ada would be
so strong?)

Anyway, having had The Mandate, then abandoning it is worse than never
having The Mandate to begin with. Think about it - the perception is that
the government was admitting it made a mistake by mandating Ada, so the
contractors started abandoning it in droves. Standing there saying "No!
Really! I'm *NOT* saying Ada is a bad thing!!!!" doesn't matter. Actions
speak louder than words and perception often *IS* reality. ("Hey, the DoD
dropped Ada like a hot rock. We must have been right all along. Ada really
*did* suck!)

The good news is that if people are writing thoughtful articles like this
and observing that Ada really does have benefits (despite lack of use) maybe
it might generate some renewed interest. The fact that they're writing about
it at all is a sign that Ada isn't a non-issue. IOW, "I don't care what they
say about Ada as long as they capitalize its name right!" :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Volkert" <Volkert.Barr@freenet.de> wrote in message
news:b84db440.0201301508.1e3ea4b6@posting.google.com...
> found at Embedded Systems Programming:
>
> >Ada is the only language designed to
> >significantly reduce and maybe even
> >eliminate dumb programming errors. Did
> >it fall into disuse because we're
> >intellectually lazy?
>
> read more: http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20020125S0098
>
> Volkert