Re: Current status of Ada?

[Markus E L <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

Harald Korneliussen wrote:

> On Aug 22, 2:53 am, "Jeffrey R. Carter"
> <spam.jrcarter....@acm.nospam.org> wrote:
>
>> And some projects using Ada commercially consider it a competitive
>> advantage and keep it secret.
>
> Are you sure? It seems to me it's in the companies' best interests to
> say whether they are using Ada, since Ada developers are tricky to get
> hold of. Keeping it secret seems to me both difficult (what do you
> write in the job ads?) and counterproductive.

Depends what you're offering. If you're offering a program component
it might be in your best interest to offer it in a language the
customer uses or might want to use (and if your customer works in
defense or aerospace that might well be Ada). If you're offering a
complete application it depends on the customer: I've ben bidding for
projects where the customer then went for getting the thing done in C#
(by someone else). I've actually had other projects where the customer
didn't care too much (because he'd have to buy maintainance from a
third party anyway). I suggest that in the latter case it's often more
useful to focus on the properties / features of the system to be
developed, not on the implementation technique or the language: That
would only serve to confuse the customer (looking up Ada in "the
internet" could even give them the impression that they are getting
sold a dead end technology and now amount of "arguing" will server to
clean up this impression: You won't get the opportunity to argue very
much at all). I wouldn't keep the use of Ada secret in this cases, but
neither would I try to dilute my sales pitch by introducing the
irrelevant question of which technology will be actually used: The
important bottom lines are features (including stability, freeness
from software defects and this like).

It rather depends on the given situation wether commitment to a
certain language or development method is a competitive advantage.

Just my "two cent".

Regards -- Markus