Re: Ada in Iraq

[18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ)]

18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote in message news:<bebbba07.0304230951.59468757@posting.google.com>...

> I work for a US government lab that does extensive work in air traffic
> management (ATM). We will have major input into the future of ATM in
> the US. As some of you may recall, I have a problem with some of Ada's
> syntax, but I am nevertheless convinced that Ada is fundamentally
> solid and is the right choice for the kind of software we develop and
> will develop in the future.
> 
> Unfortunately, however, none of my colleagues is even willing to
> consider using Ada. It's considered a "non-starter." C, C++, and Java
> are the only languages considered. Ada wasn't even on the radar screen
> until I brought it up. Also, I get the impression that professors who
> study safety-critical systems are mostly using Java. "Real-time Java"
> is gaining major momentum, and I fear that it could crush Ada.
> 
> I have the privledge of working with top experts in the world on
> "revolutionary" new ATM system architectures. I ocassionally try to
> sell them on Ada, but my efforts are starting to become a sort of
> joke. Some of them think I am "obsessed" with Ada, and none of them
> seems to think the choice of language is of fundamental importance
> anyway. It's an "implementation detail" as far as most of the managers
> are concerned.

Let me follow up on my earlier post. Here is an excerpt from an email
I recently received from a very competent and productive software
engineer who works down the hall from me and who has great influence
over our choice of language:

Your continued obsession with Ada for purely academic reasons is a
seemingly naive approach to real software development.  I have not
seen any legitimate justification for switching to Ada.  Which feature
of Ada critical to our **** development cannot be achieved with
C/C++/Java?  There are several reasons why Ada is not practical. 
First, there is no in-house large-scale Ada application development
experience among the software developers or civil servants.  We can't
wait around while 40 developers come up speed. Furthermore, i'll be
blunt and say there was "little" in-house C++  experience when the
**** was redesigned and we're still paying the price for that
inexperience.  Second, the FAA does not use Ada for the rest of its
FFP software development.  The bottomline is that in today's world, if
you want to draw from the largest pool of talent, you better be
programming in C, C++ or Java.  Call it inertia if you want. It
doesn't matter really.  Ultimately, any truly critical Ada feature
will eventually be added to C++ or Java.