Re: Current status of Ada?

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

"Harald Korneliussen" <vintermann@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1187850312.375316.57440@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 22, 2:53 am, "Jeffrey R. Carter"
> <spam.jrcarter....@acm.nospam.org> wrote:
>
>> And some projects using Ada commercially consider it a competitive
>> advantage and keep it secret.
>
> Are you sure? It seems to me it's in the companies' best interests to
> say whether they are using Ada, since Ada developers are tricky to get
> hold of. Keeping it secret seems to me both difficult (what do you
> write in the job ads?) and counterproductive.
>
I once had a commercial client that required a non-disclosure agreement
about their use of Ada because of competitive reasons.   In their view,
their competitors would use this fact against them as a sales gimmick. The
fear was that the competitors would ridicule them for "using a language
that was not part of the mainstream and had been rejected by the Department
of Defense."

Note that, when Emmett Paige wrote his famous memo abrogating the
Ada mandate, the memo was widely interpreted as the equivalent of the
DoD admitting that Ada was a mistake, and direct abandonment of its
use for future DoD projects.   Although that was not the intent of the
memo, that interpretation is now widespread both within and outside
the DoD.

It is unfortunate that the memo was written in a way that left it open to
Ada's enemies to misinterpret.   The damage done is widespread.  The
educational institution where I teach once required Ada of its students.
Now the language is almost non-existent except in a two-week portion
of an eleven week class that I teach.  No one else in our computer science
department gives it any credibility at all.

The real-time software projects are now being written in Java.   The funding
for research will not support anything with the Ada language involved.   The
newly-hired faculty members regard Ada as a quaint era of the past, not
something to be taken seriously.

I have been an Ada advocate for about twenty years, but it is becoming clear
that, without some miracle or absent someone in the DoD coming to their
senses, the use of the language will continue to decline both in the commercial
world and in the DoD.   When I was still consulting and teaching Ada, one of
my major clients, a DoD contractor building one of our major weapons systems,
switched from Ada to C++.   It was a massively stupid decision.   But the man
who was previously in charge, who understood the value of Ada, retired.  His
successor knew little about Ada and was a strong advocate of C++.   Without
the mandate in place, he could blithely ignore the wisdom of using Ada and
demand that everything be written in C++.

I asked the question, at the time, "What makes you think you can use a language
such as C++ that is inherently error-prone, and expect a result that is 
error-free."
My credibility suffered from my resistance to C++.    The more I saw of, and
continue to see of, C++, the more I realize how dangerous the language is and
how wrong-headed it is to use C++ for military software systems, but
my opinion carries no weight.   At the same time, in an effort to offset the
known dangers of C++, many DoD organizations and their contractors have
chosen Java.   This is also a dumb decision, but the new real-time features
of Java make it more difficult to clarify the points that make Ada a better
choice.

There is no single strong advocate for Ada at present.   There is no powerful
corporate sponsor as there is for Java.  There is no major Ada project that
is visible to the larger community of software developers.   The language is
seen as "old-fashioned" and out-of-date by those who have graduated within
that past ten to fifteen years.    It is an oddity.

The damage to Ada was the result of many factors.   The AJPO never quite got
it right.   The DoD certainly never got it right.   The infighting between Ada 
vendors
never helped.   The fact that Ada compiler vendors charged outragesous prices 
for
their compilers helped to discourage commercial organizations from using Ada:
COBOL, C, C, Pascal, were more affordable.   Most PC versions of Ada had
less capability for building PC applications directly than BASIC.  With 
exception
of the Meridian Compiler, there were no good libraries for creating MS-DOS
applications.   Even Meridian got it wrong by defining the data type for system
address incorrectly.

With Ada 95, the designers and contributors to the design of the language did 
get
a lot of things right.  Ada finally became a language for the ordinary 
programmer.
The time was also right.   A lot of people renewed their interest in the 
language.
Then, grabbing defeat from the jaws of potential victory, the letter from Mr. 
Paige
muddled the entire decision-making process.    A delay of two or three years
before writing that kind of letter might have made a difference.   Instead, the
developer community ran as fast as it could to find other options.

JSF is being developed in C++.  A truly dumb decision.    Missile Defense Agency
has completely abandoned Ada.

As noted in an earlier post, I made an inquiry some time ago about the current 
state
of Ada usage.   I am constrained from publishing the names of projects that are 
using
Ada, but I was suprised to find that there are still quite a few. 
Unfortunately, such
constraints do not help to promote the awareness that Ada is real and continues 
to
be a valuable tool for building software systems.  I promote it whenever I can 
for
my own students and have had thesis students do their M.S. thesis using Ada.  I
make it clear in all of my software engineering classes that Ada continues to be 
the
most effective language when one needs to take an engineering view of the 
software
process.

But individual professors of computer science are of little importance in the 
effort to
improve the state of Ada utilization and awareness.  We need some kind of larger
effort.  The Ada Resource Association (or whatever it is currently called) has 
proven
ineffectual.   The AdaIC web site, while in capable hands, has no pro-active 
role.
And the Ada compiler publishers seem to be ashamed to admit, broadcast, or
let anyone know that they have Ada products.   When is the last time that 
Rational
had any information about its Ada compiler at a conference or trade-show?  When
is the last time that any Ada compiler publisher had a booth at a trade-show? 
When
have we last seen any publicity about the value of Ada for some major project? 
Where
has anyone seen an Ada textbook for sale in a bookstore?  Even the 
computer-centric
bookstores have no books on Ada -- none.

As long as Ada remains invisible the number of projects will decline.   As long 
as officials
in the DoD believe that Ada is not supposed to be used for military projects 
anymore
(many believe just that), Ada will be in decline.

This is truly unfortunate.  Ada continues to be the best hope as a language for 
software
engineering.   In my view, it is still the best language for use in 
safety-critical, mission-critical,
and military software systems.   It offers a lot to commercial software 
developers, as well.
How we get that message out, now that there is no powerful sponsor and no 
effective
Ada consortium, I don't know.   At one time, I used to write a lot of articles 
about the
value of Ada for software magazines such as JOOP, HP Professional, Embedded 
Systems
Programming, and others.  That seemed to help a little.   I have yet to see 
anyone publish
an article about the Ada 2005 standard -- even in DoD publications.   It is as 
if it never
happened.

I no longer have the time to devote to Ada since my role has changed.    I am no 
longer
directly involved in Ada, though I continue to promote it whenever I can.   I 
can still
teach it in some of my classes, but I get the question from my colleagues, "Why 
are
we bothering with that old language?"     At present, I am the last hold-out for 
keeping
Ada in some small part of our curriculum.  When I am gone, Ada will also be 
gone. Or
as newer faculty members take over my courses, Ada will vanish entirely.

I wish I could outline an action plan instead of posting a tale of lament. 
Perhaps someone
from this forum can come up with a solution for improving the situation.   I 
wonder if
someone might write and publish some articles about the new standard and the 
continuing
viability of the language?    Maybe we can get someone in the DoD, someone with 
a brain
in their head who understands software, to reinvigorate and reinstate the 
interest and
committment to Ada.   I would hope so, but it is a faint hope at this point.

Richard Riehle