Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

[nasser@apldbio.com (Nasser Abbasi)]

   From: gwinn@res.ray.com (Joe Gwinn)
   Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
   Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 16:48:08 -0500
   Organization: Raytheon Electronic Systems

   Mainly, because Gnu C has been around a long time and been used by lots of
   people, so the problems are mostly solved. Why won't this apply to Gnu
   Ada95 et al?  It probably will, eventually.  But not soon enough to matter
   for my current projects.  Perhaps in a few years, when the next design-in
   window rolls around.

   Gnu Ada95 is *very* young, both in years and in miles traveled, and I can
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   see no reason to be a pioneer here.  Pioneers collect arrows, die famous
   but penniless.  For me, it's all risk and no benefit.  My military
   customers feel the same way.  And, I must say that their ardor for Ada
   seems to be cooling, even as their ardor for COTS grows.

Well, Ada95 is older than Java, yet it seems the whole market is
jumping over itself to use Java, Then how do explain that? I dont see
any one saying Java is too young lets wait few years untill the bugs
are out of it befor we use it ? They use it today with bugs and all.


   It took Ada83 tool suites something like six years to become sufficiently
   mature for us to use it on major projects.  Let's assume that because
   Ada95 isn't starting from scratch, it will take only three years.  So,
   1995+3= 1998, which is approximately when that next design-in window will
   arrive.

   Note that the C/C++ world is from ten to one hundred times larger than the
   Ada world, and had a 10-year head start.  It's not obvious that Ada,
   however perfect it may be, will ever catch up, because the C/C++
   "industrial-strength cashflow" is larger than the Ada cashflow by a like
   ratio.  The rich always get richer.  It's a matter of market size and
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   economics, not technology.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

May be software ENGINEERING is different from other engineering. But in
other engineering fields one would choose the best technology for the
job, not the one that has the most market size. 
This is like a civil engineer choosing plastic to build a bridge instead of
steel becasue plastic is more popular and has more market share.

Plus, I dont see why C++ has 10 years start over Ada, after all Ada is
allready an ANSI and ISO standard, while C++ is neither still, offcourse
this assumes that standards are important thing to look at, May be for
some people they are not important, but I think they are.

nasser





-- 
Nasser Abbasi. C/C++/Ada Solaris. GeneAssist - A client/server application 
for Nucleic acid and protein sequence search and analysis. 
PE-Applied BioSystem division. email:  nasser@apldbio.com   
MSEE(control), MSCS, MSCE, FM(Fide Chess Master 1.e4 !!   1-0 )