Death by analogy Part 1 (was Re: is ada dead?)

Death by analogy Part 1 (was Re: is ada dead?)

[Michael P. Card]

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Hello CLA-

This post reminds me of a post I read a couple of years ago by Bertrand Meyer regarding the use of analogies and the erroneous assumptions that
often underlie them.

In this case, the hypothetical wire cutters offer a 2% productivity boost and cost 100X as much as a competitive set of wire cutters. The obvious
implication is that Ada is similar, i.e. single-digit productivity boost for 100X the cost.

When I read things like this, and many of the other posts in this thread, I wonder if the "Ada offers no benefits worthy of its cost/risk of
vendors going out of business/etc etc" viewpoints are the result of the types of work being done by their posters.

In the sort of work I do, I find C/C++ to be very backward by comparison to Ada, especially in the areas of type safety and concurrent programming
for real-time.

Rather than saying Ada is like a pair of wire cutters that offer a 2% productivity boost for 100X the cost, I would say the situation is more like
a case last year where I did some of my own landscaping. The tools at my disposal were a shovel, a mattock and a 5-gallon pail, i.e. the stuff I
had in my garage. The job took me a few days to complete, but I didn't have to spend a nickel on tools.

Now, I could have gone to NationsRent and rented a Bobcat (mini-backhoe) for a few hundred dollars and done the job in less than a half hour, but
to me it wasn't worth the cost. Does that mean that a Bobcat is a tool that offers a mediocre performance boost for thousands of times the cost of
a shovel?

It really depends on whether you are doing some minor home landscaping or building a highway.

The posts I have read here imply to me that many of the Java/C/C++ devotees are building small-scale projects where the interaction of 1, 2 or 3
programmers is sufficient for the job. At my place of employment, interaction is required between tens of programmers at least as they develop
thousands and thousands of lines of code, and from my experience Ada is *VASTLY* superior for such jobs. In these environments, the cost/benefit
of using Ada is **NOTHING** like a 2% productivity boost for 100X the cost.

Indeed, using C++ for these kinds of jobs is more like building a highway with a mattock and shovel, all the while praising oneself for being
frugal by avoiding the cost of the backhoe, to put forth a counter-analogy ;-) I have been on big projects done in C++ and this experience has
only reinforced my perceptions about the benefits of Ada.

Just because I wouldn't buy my own Bobcat to tinker around my yard doesn't mean a Bobcat isn't a great tool. Likewise, saying that Ada offers
minimal benefits for small-scale/Web-applet type jobs does not therefore imply that it offers no worthwhile benefits to anyone.

- Mike

Al Christians wrote:

> Jerry Petrey wrote:
> >
> > This is certainly not nonsense.  But don't feel bad.  Many people in
> > the industry are unable to understand the true cost of developing
> > software and only look at the up-front coding costs, tool costs, etc.  > That is one of the main reasons most software is over budget and of
> > poor quality or not even ever delivered.
> >
>
> Suppose you are an electrician and you hear about a new kind of
> wirecutter.  There are studies that say this wirecutter improves
> average productivity by 2%.  If you do the math, you can figure that
> this is worth $2,000 to you over the expected 5 year life of the
> wirecutters.  You go to the store and see $1,295 wirecutter on sale
> next to all the others at $11.  Which pair do you buy?  Which toolmaker
> has biggest market share and good cash flow to finance ways to improve
> their product?
>
> For $1,284 most can think up a reason why they are not average.
>
> Al

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Death by analogy Part 1 (was RE: is Ada dead?)

[Michael P. Card]

Hello CLA-

This post reminds me of a post I read a couple of years ago by
Bertrand Meyer regarding the use of analogies and the questionable
assumptions that often underlie them.

In this case, the hypothetical pair of wire cutters offers a 2%
productivity boost and costs 100X as much as a competitive pair of
wire cutters. The implication is that Ada is similar, i.e. a small
productivity boost for a much greater cost.

When I read things like this, and many of the other posts in this
thread, I wonder if the "Ada offers no benefits worthy of its
cost/risk of vendors going out of business/etc etc" viewpoints are the
result of the types of work being done by their posters.

In the sort of work I do, I find C/C++ to be very backward by
comparison to Ada, especially in the areas of type safety and
concurrent programming for real-time.

Rather than saying Ada is like a pair of wire cutters that offer a 2%
productivity boost for 100X the cost, I would say the situation is
more like a case last year where I did some of my own landscaping. The
tools at my disposal were a shovel, a mattock and a 5-gallon pail,
i.e. the stuff I had in my garage. The job took me maybe 10-12 hours
to complete, but I didn't have to spend a nickel on tools.

Now, I could have gone to NationsRent and rented a Bobcat
(mini-backhoe) for a few hundred dollars and done the job in an hour
or less, but to me it wasn't worth the cost. Does that mean that a
Bobcat is a tool that offers a nominal performance boost for thousands
of times the cost of a shovel?

It really depends on whether you are doing some minor home landscaping
or building a highway.

The posts I have read here imply to me that many of the Java/C/C++
devotees are building small-scale projects where the interaction of 1,
2 or 3 programmers is sufficient for the job. At my place of
employment, interaction is required between tens of programmers at
least as they develop thousands and thousands of lines of code, and
from my experience Ada is *VASTLY* superior for such jobs. In these
environments, the cost/benefit of using Ada is **NOTHING** like a 2%
productivity boost for 100X the cost.

Indeed, using C++ for these kinds of jobs is more like building a
highway with a mattock and shovel, all the while praising oneself for
being frugal by avoiding the cost of the backhoe, to put forth a
counter-analogy ;-) I have been on big projects done in C++ and this
experience has only reinforced my perceptions about the benefits of
Ada.

Just because I wouldn't buy my own Bobcat to tinker around my yard
doesn't mean a Bobcat isn't a great tool. Likewise, if it were true
that Ada offered minimal benefits for small-scale/Web-applet type jobs
that would not therefore imply that it offers no worthwhile benefits
to anyone.

- Mike

Al Christians wrote:

> Jerry Petrey wrote:
> >
> > This is certainly not nonsense.  But don't feel bad.  Many people in
> > the industry are unable to understand the true cost of developing
> > software and only look at the up-front coding costs, tool costs, etc.  > That is one of the main reasons most software is over budget and of
> > poor quality or not even ever delivered.
> >
>
> Suppose you are an electrician and you hear about a new kind of
> wirecutter.  There are studies that say this wirecutter improves
> average productivity by 2%.  If you do the math, you can figure that
> this is worth $2,000 to you over the expected 5 year life of the
> wirecutters.  You go to the store and see $1,295 wirecutter on sale
> next to all the others at $11.  Which pair do you buy?  Which toolmaker
> has biggest market share and good cash flow to finance ways to improve
> their product?
>
> For $1,284 most can think up a reason why they are not average.
>
> Al

Re: Death by analogy Part 1 (was RE: is Ada dead?)

[Mário Amado Alves]

> The posts I have read here imply to me that many of the Java/C/C++
> devotees are building small-scale projects where the interaction of 1,
> 2 or 3 programmers is sufficient for the job. At my place of
> employment, interaction is required between tens of programmers at
> least as they develop thousands and thousands of lines of code, and
> from my experience Ada is *VASTLY* superior for such jobs.

Actually this might be a non-issue: it has been demonstrated (hopefully my talk at Ada'2001 helped ;-) that contrarywise to common belief Ada is a
better language also for programming "in the small". Also a common mistake is to judge the learning curve of Ada longer than that of Java or C++.
It is not, at least significantly. It is about a year long in every case.

Anyway I think I like it being part of the "enlightned minority". I don't try to convert anybody anymore. And anyway in business world the choice
of Ada might be a sort of business "secret". Ada-based firms simply deliver better service, and to C++ players they may calmly say "more power to
you". Of course there is the problem of Ada programmers shortage. Or is it really? Michael does not seem to have any trouble bringing together
"tens of [Ada] programmers"...

--
   ,
 M A R I O   data miner, LIACC, room 221   tel 351+226078830, ext 121
 A M A D O   Rua Campo Alegre, 823         fax 351+226003654
 A L V E S   P-4150 PORTO, Portugal        mob 351+939354002

Re: Death by analogy Part 1 (was RE: is Ada dead?)

[Michael P. Card]

Hey Mario (& everybody else on CLA)-

You wrote:

> Actually this might be a non-issue: it has been demonstrated (hopefully my talk at Ada'2001 helped ;-) that contrarywise to common belief Ada is a
> better language also for programming "in the small". Also a common mistake is to judge the learning curve of Ada longer than that of Java or C++.
> It is not, at least significantly. It is about a year long in every case.

I agree with you here; I would rather use Ada "in the small" too, but
it to me it seems almost necessary when programming "in the large"!

>Of course there is the problem of Ada programmers shortage. Or is it 
>really? Michael does not seem to have any trouble bringing together
> "tens of [Ada] programmers"...

I was mostly referring to the past here; we don't have Ada projects
that are as big as we used to have. I would guess most of our Ada
projects today range from the size of the Ada team on my project (3
people) to maybe 20 Ada programmers, and most of our projects are
probably 6-10 Ada programmers. Of course, what they are building is
smaller than what we used to build too.

- Mike

Ada better language also for programming "in the small".

[raj]

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:29:02 +0000, Mário Amado Alves
<maa@liacc.up.pt> wrote:

>Actually this might be a non-issue: it has been demonstrated (hopefully my talk at Ada'2001 helped ;-) 
>that contrarywise to common belief Ada is a
>better language also for programming "in the small". 

But this can also be said about Ocaml, Haskell, Lisp, Eiffel, Erlang,
Scheme, etc ...
And they do have the advantage of being more buzzword compliant :-)

Re: Ada better language also for programming "in the small".

[M. A. Alves]

> > Ada is a better language [than C, C++, Java, PERL] also for
> > programming "in the small".
>
> But this can also be said about Ocaml, Haskell, Lisp, Eiffel, Erlang,
> Scheme, etc ... And they do have the advantage of being more buzzword
> compliant :-)

Sure, if you are 'functional' enough ;-)

-- 
   ,
 M A R I O   data miner, LIACC, room 221   tel 351+226078830, ext 121
 A M A D O   Rua Campo Alegre, 823         fax 351+226003654
 A L V E S   P-4150 PORTO, Portugal        mob 351+939354002