Re: F-22 ADA Programming

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 14:54:34 -0800 (PST), rriehle@itu.edu declaimed the
following:

>I recall from when I was actively teaching Ada that one large DoD contractor (one of the largest) decided to use C++ instead of Ada.  The reason?   We can hire C++ programmers right out of college.  This is rather strange.  Why would they think that recent  college graduates schooled in a clunky language such as C++, where they wrote mostly toy programs using features that we cannot allow (notice the long list of proscriptions for JSF), who need to be retaught how to use the language safely -- how can they think they are getting any benefit?   I used to ask they, "Why would you choose a programming language that is inherently error-prone and expect an outcome that is error-free?"  Answer: "Go away Richard.  We have made our decision."  
>

	Well... I was in a program where the "real-time" group (about 30
people, out of 130 in the department) did a study to determine what
language they would use when moving from PDP-11 assembly to a suite of
VAX-11 systems. I don't know what the real arguments were, but they
rejected VAX-11 assembly (fine, it is a different instruction set),
rejected F77 [remember those other 100 employees? we were all skilled in
VAX F77]... They did reject C! (yay, one win).

	They chose DEC Pascal to implement the ground-base real-time system!
Main argument -- they could find Pascal programmers coming out of college
(dates this effort, doesn't it?) Though what a bunch of Turbo-Pascal users
would be capable of on a multiprocessing OS I have no idea (I don't recall
any significant hiring taking place either).

	The decision made when I learned of the "study" I still submitted a
comment to the management emphasizing that we had a significant staff
skilled in F77 with DEC extensions (I once bent the I/O system to do
double-buffered 9-track tape input -- all using F77 constructs!). I also
emphasized that, as long as they were going to go the mile for Pascal, they
should have fallen onto their faces and picked up Ada which was designed
for the type of application they were making, and corrected the flaws of
Pascal.

	Ah well, probably the same contractor -- current initials of LM
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/