Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada?

[Michael Card <thehouseofcards@remove.this.part.mac.com>]

In article 
<pan.2005.03.13.23.20.18.926991@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk>,
 "Dr. Adrian Wrigley" <amtw@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 09:22:26 -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:
> 
<snip>
> 
> The "Teaching new tricks..." debate shows how *amazingly*
> ill-informed people are about the Ada language features.
> (people say "do not think it supports generic programming",
> '"manually added checks" in C++ would be identically eliminated
> to the automatic checks in Ada', 'what's the use of rep. specs, except
> to restrict portability(?)' etc.)
> 
> Clearly the beliefs and reputation are a major part
> in language choice.
> 
> The three ways you can make a popular language are:
> 1)  extend a popular language (C++, F77)
> 2)  start from scratch with big budget (Java, C#)
> 3)  fill a big market vacuum with something that works
>     (Fortran, C, Cobol, PostScript, Perl <at various times>)
> 
> I'm not aware of any popular languages that came about
> in any other way.  Ada tried to be 2, 3.  But the market
> vacuum was in the eyes of the DoD, not the users/contractors.
> Ada has failed to become a popular language (in terms of users),
> and now none of these three possibilities can be used to
> rectify the situation.
> 
> Any language designer/advocate who wants to promote the
> Ada ideals would be best trying again (don't start from here!).
<snip>
> 
> back to the original topic... NOACE does seem to be a 
> real step backwards.  It looks a lot like a "Java Mandate",
> but acknowledges that there will be many exceptions,
> which C++ would probably meet.  I think it's very risky, since
> newer languages tend to have a shorter lifespan and change
> faster than mature languages.  It clearly is motivated by
> much more than the technical merits of the language.  But if colleges
> switch to teaching "C2#" or "Guam" a decade from
> now, they might be stuck with a poor technical solution, serviced by
> a declining programmer base.  And if they have to have specialized
> variants of Java for their high reliability, sub-microsecond
> real-time applications, they risk having a total "language isolate"
> on their hands.
> 
> Interesting that Boeing doesn't like Ada or C++.  It'd be interesting
> to understand why each of these fails to meet their needs.
> Particularly since both languages' advocates usually say they are
> much more suitable than Java for almost application!
> 
> It all seems a bit weird...

Adrian-

Good post, my experience has been consistent with the experiences cited 
by Richard Riehle in his post on this thread. 

The only rationale I can come up with to explain the Dod's anti-Ada bias 
is that some high-up folks in the Pentagon didn't like it, maybe because 
it was from DISA (I get the feeling DISA is one of the lesser-loved 
branches of the DoD). This distaste for Ada by the services themselves 
(USN, USA, USMC, USAF) would certainly be quickly mirrored by the 
contractors, since the services are the ones paying them, not DISA. So, 
a dislike for DISA mandates on behalf of the armed services ends up 
being reflected in their contractors, who want to "suck up" (not in the 
bad sense) to their customers as much as possible to win contracts.

This is the only explanation I can come up with, because I have never 
seen a study that says "we did this multi-million line job in C++ and 
boy are we glad we did; we saved so much $ vs. past similar jobs we have 
done in Ada". In fact, the studies out there that I am aware of say just 
the opposite.

I am wide open to receiving a C++ cost savings study, however; I just 
haven't been able to find it. If someone can send me link I'd be happy 
to read it and be educated about it. My experience with C/C++ on large 
DoD style projects suggests the usual culprits [memory corruption and 
concurrency problems] make it a more expensive choice than Ada because 
it takes longer to get the bugs out.

-Mike