Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died)

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

There were at least two formal studies I've seen comparing Ada and C. One
was as close to a controlled scientific experiment as you can get with
software development as I've ever seen. Both showed that when all other
factors were held equal, Ada came out significantly more productive & less
defective than C. In particular, it appeared that Ada got its best
improvements against C when it came to realtime, embedded work. (Dr.
McCormac's railroad experiments). This validates my own study, so I'm happy
to rest with that conclusion. There are probably other studies of which I'm
not aware. It would be highly unscientific to neglect what they demonstrate,
but I'm sure that there are folks who will not be satisfied that this is the
case even if you showed them 100 studies. When someone doesn't want to
believe something, they will inevitably find reasons to do so.

The problems Ada has encountered in gaining market acceptance don't have
much to do with either lack of real productivity improvements nor with lack
of technical merit. It has plenty more to do with the "all other things
being equal" part. In the real world, all other things are seldom equal.
When most RTOS's, support tools, embedded target hardware, prefabricated
libraries, etc., are all oriented towards C, its tough to consider some
other language because it lacks the same development leverage. If Ada wants
to be competitive against C, C++, Java and others, it has to look to provide
similar or more leverage than one gets with these other environments.

In the mean time, I'll keep using Ada in my little world and, yes, we have
kicked our competitor's butts using it. :-)

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/

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        -- H. Simpson
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soft-eng <softeng3456@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:9fa75d42.0305090937.2bbe1238@posting.google.com...
> "Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> wrote in message
news:<b8toba$79o$1@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>...
>
> If you can indeed have improved productivity and reduced defects,
> it stands to reason that your competitor will not be doing very
> well versus you!
>
> Bottom lines do count.  If time after time it so happened
> that people using Ada out-competed the ones using C,
> others would start taking notice.
>
> But in fact time after time it has failed to happen, and the only
> successful cases in Ada usage come from the situations
> where it was mandated and no competition existed at all,
> and money was no object.  If you have a business
> like that, sure, use whatever language you like.
>
> Otherwise, it might be worthwhile looking carefully at
> situation, and not just basing things on a study or two.
>
> Studies, in general, can prove all kinds of amazingly
> interesting things.  Sometimes even six before breakfast.