Re: employment with ada

[Stephen Leake <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov>]

lsiever6619@yahoo.com (L. Siever) writes:

> "Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru> wrote in message:

> Hmm, I'm not realy up to date...
> How many % of the DoD-code is still created by humans today?

100%

> There are tools out there that want to create the code for
> you(MatrixX, SCADE, etc).

They don't "create code"! They let people write code in different
languages, using a partially graphical syntax (UML tools work the same
way; UML is a language). Then they translate that code into an earlier
language that can be compiled for an actual machine.

This is a traditional path to developing a new language. I believe the
very first C++ "compiler" (Cfront?) translated C++ into C. The Gnu
compiler still translates high-level languages into assembly code; that
is not called "creating code".

> Are these tools any good?

Some of them are useful, for people who like the graphical languages,
because they are similar to the languages used in their domain
(control flow diagrams for control systems, for example).

However, the graphical languages are often poorly defined. Even UML
2.0 is not completely defined in terms of being able to generate code;
each vendor has to add some semantics and make some architecture
decisions. The best vendors give control over the missing parts to the
user, via extensions to UML.

I don't like them, because I have found that Ada is the best language
for my domain (embedded hard real-time control systems). In large
part, that is because the language is clearly defined.

-- 
-- Stephe