Re: F-22 ADA Programming

[Jeffrey Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>]

On 10/26/2014 02:20 PM, David Botton wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately Ada tends to be used as a scapegoat for managers sometimes for
> reasons things get held up etc, but here is one point valid point (also here
> is more info about how much of the F-22 is in Ada):
> 
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1110502/posts
> 
> "ADA didn't work out as expected, but some 80 percent of the F-22 code is
> still written in ADA. Getting good ADA programmers was always a problem, as
> ADA never caught on outside the Department of Defense. As a result of the
> limited pool of programmers would could work on the F-22 software, quality
> and imagination (in the design of the software) suffered."

"Lack of Ada developers" is also a false complaint. Here on c.l.a we all know
that there are Ada developers looking for Ada work and unable to find it. We
also know that teaching Ada to a good developer is a cost-saving exercise. The
real complaint is that they couldn't get people with Ada experience as cheaply
as people with experience in other languages. Generally they want to hire lots
of poor developers, since that maximizes profit on cost-plus contracts, and Ada
people tend not to fall into that category.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Why, the Mayflower was full of Fireflies, and a few
horseflies, too. The Fireflies were on the upper deck,
and the horseflies were on the Fireflies."
Duck Soup
95