Re: Availability of Ada Programmers

[mangieri@vitro.com (Michael J. Mangieri)]

In article <3gu939$i7@news1.digex.net>, cstump@levtech.com wrote:

> In article 95Feb3123532@goldfinger.mitre.org, emery@goldfinger.mitre.org
(David Emery) writes:
> >There's also a quality issue here.  Sure, you can 'buy' C hackers by
> >the dozen, but is this necessarily a good idea?  One of the problems
> >in hiring C programmers is seprating the hackers from the well-trained
> >software engineers.
> >
> >An advantage to the "Ada culture" is that software engineering is
> >generally (albeit not always) accepted as an integral part of Ada.
> >This is just not true with the "C culture".
> >
> 
> I have been hearing this argument for years. I have worked in C and 
> Ada environments (and quite a few others) and the language has nothing
> to do with the quality. And, no, it is not a culture issue. It is
> a training/teaching issue. I have seen Ada programmers code garbage
> even after using the language for years and I have seen assembly and C
> programmers code well structured applications.
> 
> Sorry for the minor rant. I just hate that "<insert language here> culture" 
> argument.

OK. I have to put my 0.02 in on this. 

First of all, I agree that training is the main issue. Properly trained
personnel will alleviate many of the problems that leads to production of
poor code. However, it cannot be denied that Ada enforces good SE; C does
not. It is easy for the 'lazy' C programmer to hack-together code; much
more difficult for the Ada programmer to do so, lazy or not :)

I teach C, C++ and Ada, and by far, my students writing in Ada produce the
better code (in terms of sound SE principles and in the quality of the
code itself). Sure, there are those who create sloppy code in any language
(and I can show you some horrific Ada code), but by far, the reverse is
true.

When it comes to 'culture' arguments, I have to agree with David.

Mikey

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