Re: Looking for Ada programmers

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

CJIII said

"It is ISO9000 ratings that are magic in Europe, which in terms of
software development sophistication is clearly far ahead of the US."

Well I won't comment on the extremely dubious claim in the second part
of this, being very familiar with the software scene on both sides of
the pond, but it is worth noting that ISO9000 certification (it is not
a "ratings" scheme at all) is a very different matter from the SEI
ratings. Having been involved in an ISO9000 certification, I certainly
think it is a useful discipline, but you have to remember that ISO9000
is a very general quality standard, applicable to a large range of
endeavors, whereas of course the SEI ratings are far more specific.
Both are valuable tools, with quite different applicability.

The importance of ISO 9000 certification certainly varies a lot. Almost
all major Indian companies are ISO9000 certified, and everywhere you look,
for example on billboards in the street, companies manufacturing everything
you can imagine trumpet their ISO 9000 certification status. I agree that
ISO9000 has more presence in Europe than here, but it certainly is not
at that level yet :-)

Perhaps on the CJIII scale Indian software development sophistication is
even further ahead than in Europe. Certainly I haven't run into the
dreaded Booch methodology very often there (though perhaps someone
from Rational will want to tell me where to look :-). On the other hand
I doubt they spend their days worrying about second order predicate
logic either :-) :-)