From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e29c511c2b08561c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: bell@most.magec.com (Roy M. Bell) Subject: Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered? Date: 1996/06/03 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 158221998 sender: usenet@most.fw.hac.com x-nntp-posting-host: rmbell references: <4mq7mg$8hs@jake.probe.net> organization: Magnavox newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-06-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I have just finished reading the web pages mentioned in earlier articles with the title of: "Review of the Past and Present Contexts for Using Ada Within the Department of Defense". I could tell the that the people who wrote this synopsis were trying to be fair because they mentioned a number of good things about Ada and some are fairly recent. In my opinion the most important fact comes in the last sentence of the first paragraph where they say the following: "Since 1977, the number of programming languages used in DOD systems has declined from an estimated 450 to 37, four of which (Ada, C, Cobol, and Fortran) account for three quarters of all source code." I find the most disturbing statement in the middle of the second paragraph to be the following: "Today, as commercial firms transition to client-server based technologies and object-oriented programming languages, they are shifting to C++, which is seen as a natural extension of their experience with C." I was under the impression the sales of C++ products and services to be declining. Does anyone have any figures? I was under the impression that the fastest growth was in the non-traditional 3rd generational languages such as HTML, VRML, and graphical front ends for databases. It is very common to see a custom language or custom application beat a traditional 3rd generational language in specific small-scale circumstances, but this doesn't mean that the mandated should be lifted. The fifth paragraph contains the following: "In addition, the lack of suitable software development tools, software libraries, and bindings can inhibit use of a programming language. These elements enable programmers to rapidly generate reliable code, reuse proven building blocks of code written in other languages, and link with a wide range of system software utilities." This is a fair point. I would also add that the lack of a standard for C++ also makes reuse difficult.