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

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

is ada dead?

[tyler spivey]

is ada dead?
is it only used in department of defense?
is it easy/hard to learn? wil it die soon?

Re: is ada dead?

[Lao Xiao Hai]

tyler spivey wrote:

> is ada dead?

Yes. It seems no one lives forever.  In the case of Ada,
Countess of Lovelace, she died sometime around 1854.

Richard Riehle

Re: is ada dead?

[Adrian Hoe]

Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<3B460DA9.C2965042@ix.netcom.com>...
> tyler spivey wrote:
> 
> > is ada dead?
> 
> Yes. It seems no one lives forever.  In the case of Ada,
> Countess of Lovelace, she died sometime around 1854.
> 
> Richard Riehle



Ada is dead in Malaysia. One of UTM's (University of Technology
Malaysia) KL campus was teaching and promoting Ada with a lot of
confidence couple years ago when they were a joint-venture with
Thomson CSF. Recently, I found that they had deserted Ada and switch
to Java for the reason that there is no Ada market in Malaysia.
ANother reason came from one of the senior lecturer was that Ada was
too old. I told the senior lecturer I could not believe what he was
saying because they were so confident about Ada.

So, is Ada dead in Malaysia? I don't know how many Malaysians have
joint CLA, but I will say that Ada is not dead in Malaysia.

Reason? UTM's main campus in JB is teaching Ada in general and real
time programming and there are as many as 120 students right now, yes,
today!

Lexical Integration (M) Sdn Bhd, the company I work with, although not
as agressive as 4-5 years ago, still promoting Ada. Our R&D division
uses Ada for research projects. 100% of all works in Lexical are using
Ada. Lexical Integration will emerge as Ada authority in Malaysia in
no time to come and that's our ultimate goal!

Ada is a programming language appreciated by engineers who know the
benefits. Java is a programming language appreciated by people who
likes to read ads and listen to marketing persuasion. I do not intend
to flame Java. It is a language with its own benefits and strength.
This is what actually happened in Malaysia. People likes to follow the
newest trends.

In universities (Malaysian, Ok?), programming languages are taught not
because of teching the students of programming concepts, but for the
sake of market requirement. That's the most pathetic and irresponsible
decision.

Adrian
Just my 2 cents worth!

Re: is ada dead?

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

"Adrian Hoe" <byhoe@greenlime.com> wrote in message news:9ff447f2.0107061757.34ca0723@posting.google.com...
> Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<3B460DA9.C2965042@ix.netcom.com>...
 > Ada is dead in Malaysia. One of UTM's (University of Technology
> Malaysia) KL campus was teaching and promoting Ada with a lot of
> confidence couple years ago when they were a joint-venture with
> Thomson CSF. Recently, I found that they had deserted Ada and switch
> to Java for the reason that there is no Ada market in Malaysia.
> ANother reason came from one of the senior lecturer was that Ada was
> too old. I told the senior lecturer I could not believe what he was
> saying because they were so confident about Ada.
[....]
> In universities (Malaysian, Ok?), programming languages are taught not
> because of teching the students of programming concepts, but for the
> sake of market requirement. That's the most pathetic and irresponsible
> decision.

You are in a good society. I was once teaching Real Time Programming and was
using Ada. This was at not that bad U.S. University. Once, after the end of semester
students brought to the Dean collection of Classified from local newspapers and
asked him to find at least one job as that would require Ada. Dean was smart enough
to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was
smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C.

This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada
programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL.
Students invest quite substantial amount of money to get a degree, and yes, they
expect that this investment will bring some return. Generally, there is little room
to study for "scientific pleasure". They are studying to get skills that will position
them well on the job market. They will not learn Ada just this is a "better language".
They will study the language that is visible on the market.

What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost
of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say,
Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure
of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop
one zero from their price list.

A.L.

Re: is ada dead?

[Michal Nowak]

On 01-07-07, at 17:37, Andrzej Lewandowski  wrote:

>to send them away. And was smart enough to have a nice chat with me. And I was
>smart enough to spend the whole summer converting my course from Ada to C.

Why you made step backward? I'm switching now from C++ to Ada and I do not
regret it. I will not list here benefits of using Ada - it would make this
post very long, besides everybody here knows them. I still have to do projects
for my studies in C++/Java, but after learning Ada error rate decreased,
programs are more readable. Magic?

>This decision was not irresponsible and pathetic. There is a job market for Ada
>programmers, but very (VERY) small compared to say, C++, Java, VB or COBOL.

I search if there are job opportunities in Ada, before I decided to learn it
- I would be waste of time for learning language which is not used and becoming
extinct. I wanted two find them, because Ada is so good language. And I found
them. Lots of jobs in Ada - big pity none in my country, but world is so small :)
It's true, that there is more offers for C++/Java (what is VB - very basic?)
programmers, but Ada projects are much more interesting. Companies use C++/Java/
Visual Basic, because coding time is a bit faster than in Ada - they faster see
program alive, but...Look, how many bugs are in software. New version of software
are produced one after another, just to fix bugs. But the worse thing is that,
software buyers accepct bugs. What you do if you buy bad-working washing mashine?
Return it back. And software? My idea is to produce good, reliable software.
I don't claim that C++/Java programs must be unreliable. I see that writing
reliable software in Ada is much more easier.

>What regards using Ada in the industry: nothing will change if the average cost
>of SUPPORTED Ada tools is in high 5 digit range. Yes, Ada is better than, say,
>Java, at least for some tasks, but I cannot justify the cost just to have a pleasure
>of working with "better language". Nothing will change if Ada vendors don't drop
>one zero from their price list.

Can be true, can be false. Program lifecycle is not only coding. There is also
maintnace, new versions developent. These phases are less money-consuming in
Ada than in other mentioned languages. One important thing - you buy compiler
one time and use it for long period. It is used for writting many programs.
So I think, that good compiler is worthy investing.

-Mike

------------------------
Mike Nowak
mailto: vinnie@inetia.pl

Re: is ada dead?

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

"Michal Nowak" <vinnie@inetia.pl> wrote in message news:mailman.994589409.11874.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
> On 01-07-07, at 17:37, Andrzej Lewandowski  wrote:
 >
> Can be true, can be false. Program lifecycle is not only coding. There is also
> maintnace, new versions developent. These phases are less money-consuming in
> Ada than in other mentioned languages. One important thing - you buy compiler
> one time and use it for long period. It is used for writting many programs.
> So I think, that good compiler is worthy investing.
>

I am sufficiektly familiar with the industry and business to respond
just with single word: NONSENSE.

A.L.

Re: is ada dead?

[Jerry Petrey]

Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:
> 
> > "Michal Nowak" <vinnie@inetia.pl> wrote:
> >
> > Can be true, can be false. Program lifecycle is not only coding. There is also
> > maintnace, new versions developent. These phases are less money-consuming in
> > Ada than in other mentioned languages. One important thing - you buy compiler
> > one time and use it for long period. It is used for writting many programs.
> > So I think, that good compiler is worthy investing.
> >
> 
> I am sufficiektly familiar with the industry and business to respond
> just with single word: NONSENSE.
> 
> A.L.

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.

Jerry
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Jerry Petrey                                                
-- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation, Guidance, & Control
-- Raytheon Missile Systems          - Member Team Ada & Team Forth
-- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to
reply                  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: is ada dead?

[Al Christians]

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

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

[Michael P. Card]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3733 bytes --]

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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