DoD Ada95: Nasa buys an Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD.

DoD Ada95: Nasa buys an Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD.

[Kenneth Mays]

Subject: 
NASA buys the Thomson Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD.

Greetings,

Due to many rumors and critisms about Ada95 in the defense industry, 
I will try to set the record straight in simple terms. The Department 
of Defense is standing behind Ada95. All of their work is falling 
under both the CIM (Corporate Information Management) and C4I 
(Command, Control, Communication, Computers and Intelligence) which 
will support this programming language (one day).

Why? The cost effectiveness and efficiency of maintaining Ada95 over 
C++ is one of many reasons. The main areas are long-term maintainance 
and support. The DoD is concerned that years from now, will the 
programmers of tommorrow understand the programs of today?!

There was a rumor about waivers to use C++ in place of Ada95. This is 
NOT going to happen, based on the DoD mandate.  My recent notes on 
this subject explains that in a life development cycle you provide 
leeway to use both programming languages - where it is cost effective 
and not time-consuming (think productivity). I don't think I need to 
go into a discussion on system programming versus application 
programming. Why use PowerBuilder/Delphi/Visual Basic when you can do 
it all in C++??? (Oh no Ken, don't say that!) 

Sidenote: The concept of this is when I did system/application 
programming utilizing DEC PDP-11 minicomputers in the 1980s, We used 
BASIC/BASIC-PLUS/PASCAL for the majority of our work. The code was 
extremely easy to maintain, understand, and very productive. Then, we 
had to start programming in C on a DEC VAX-11/780. Our team leader 
was from MIT, and he even barked at the use of C (what a waste of 
time).  We spent days looking at code - trying to figure out what the 
previous DEC engineers had done. We managed to get by, and in 1984 I 
got smart and bought the C Primer Book (the first edition) from The 
Waite Group.  Learning C was a little easier than programming in 
PDP-11 assembler, but there lies the same principle. It is NOT cost 
effective to use assembler where C++ is sufficient, neither is it 
cost effective to use C++ where Ada95 works very well. You are 
dealing with nonprogrammers as well as programmers - it relates to 
what project you are working on and the maintainance and/or support 
people of that project. Kind of an MIS project management issue. Pull 
out your PERT/CPM charts!

 The DoD COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) ideas merit the use of 
commercially buying available software - so its not the DoD's fault 
if the compiler writers don't comply to the current standard. You 
can't blame the DoD for decent Ada95 tutorials not available at your 
local bookstore. Is there a book on "Teaching Yourself Ada95 in 21 
Days" by Sams Publishing (no offense)?? Will it come with a CD with a 
free Ada95 compiler and Ada95 tools so you can do decent programming 
on your IBM-PC compatible computer AT HOME!!!???!!?? I see Visual C++ 
V1.0 and V2.0 are available in bookstores with the book on "Teaching 
Yourself Visual C++ in 12 easy lessons."

 Are you still waiting on djgpp V2.x for use with GNAT-95 V3.03 for 
MSDOS?  More waiting? Guess you'll use the Linux version again! I 
state this with the reason that in over a million homes, the IBM PC 
(compatible) is the commonplace home computer (besides the 
Commodore-Amiga computer
 (smile)). Why then, are we not emphasizing more Ada95 tools on the 
PC that we can port to our mainframe/minicomputer counterparts?!? Is 
there a SGI laptop home computer in the house? I'd rather install 
Slackware Linux on a PC laptop and see real productive work in Ada95 
on a plane ride to Ada-Europe!!! The Department of Defense should 
look more at helping the "closet engineers" and home hobbyists who 
have made the Internet (even TCP/IP NT (V6)  and  MBone) what it is 
today. Put Ada95 tools in the hands on small businesses and students 
- not expensive workstations or ineffective noncomplaint Ada95 
compilers (no fingers pointed)! Tell the truth about Ada95 and how we 
can help, and stop trying to slap marketing hype in our faces.
 
Many programmers don't have a clue about  ATLAS and JOVIAL. They 
probably never programmed in Smalltalk 80/V or RPG II or COBOL (ha). 
They don't have to maintain these languages, so why should they care? 
When you have to start paying billions of dollars in maintaining 
"buggy" code (not to leave Ada95 out of that arena),  you too will 
start looking for a programming language that is not only a little 
more productive - but somewhat EASIER to maintain and debug as well.  
; -)  Ken L. Mays

Please refer to:
htp://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/lists/c4ipro
http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC
Other hotspots:
http://www.acm.org/SigAda
http://www.algonet.se/~agora/ada
http://www.docs.uu.se/disada95
http://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu

Re: DoD Ada95: Nasa buys an Ada95 compiler and all the world hated the DoD.

[Robert Dewar]

Kenneth says

" Are you still waiting on djgpp V2.x for use with GNAT-95 V3.03 for
MSDOS?  More waiting? Guess you'll use the Linux version again! I
state this with the reason that in over a million homes, the IBM PC
(compatible) is the commonplace home computer (besides the
Commodore-Amiga computer"

The good news here is that we expect a release of 3.04 for DOS with
both djgpp V2.x and full tasking support in the near future. We have
this working interally in house at Ada Core Technologies, and expect
to be releasing it fairly soon.