Re: F-22 ADA Programming

[wilson <winslole@udayton.edu>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:46:19 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber  
<wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> 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


-- When I aaked a DOD contractor in the late 90s why they changed to C++  
the answer was:  We can hire C++ programmers from the local college, but  
they seem incapable of learning Ada.

I wonder how many other languages these "programmers" could learn.