Re: The return of Ada95

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Kenneth Mays (KMays@msn.com) wrote:
: Hi,

: I wanted to answer questions concerning Ada and Boeing - besides a
: few other things:
...
: Boeing is heading toward C++ future development in their avionic
: systems. : I'm sure they will support Ada95 if their programmers want
: to, but first lets find a industry-standarized Ada95 compiler that
: everybody can use.

Well we see many bogus arguments potentially used for language selection,
and this one is rather typical.

What can me meant by an industry-standardized Ada 95 compiler, or for
that matter an industry-standardized C++ compiler.

Yes, there many be compilers that are in pretty standard use (for either
language), but these off-the-shelf products are not going to be what is
used in avionics. Microsoft for instance is not in the business of
providing corss-development tools with FAA certified runtime systems?

If by industry standard, you mean compilers that are NIST-certified, that
indeed is a useful criterion, and by that criterion, Ada 95 is far further
along than C++. One can safely predict that there will be a range of 
NIST-cerfified Ada 95 cross-development systems before the first
NIST-certified C++ compiler appears (given the state of the C++
standardization process, this will take a while!)

Of course what we have here from Kenneth is not "answers", but merely
speculation. Who knows what language(s) Boeing will choose in the future,
but it is unlikely that they will make the choice based on bogus
reasoning (or for that matter merely because of what the programmers
"want").