Re: Ada used in General Aviation (GA) applications?

[Anders Wirzenius <anders@no.email.thanks.invalid>]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org> writes:

> Anders Wirzenius writes:
> > A free (no cost) hint to all vendors ;):
> > 1. Start a delivery project and use the
> >    programming_language_for_fast_delivery.
> > 2. Start a parallel Ada project for the same product.
> > 3. Deliver the product from point 1 to the customer.
> > 4. While he installs and sets up his test environment, continue with
> >    the point 2 project.
> > 5. Receive bug reports from the customer.
> > 6. Correct the bugs from point 5 and deliver a new version.
> > 7. Meanwhile, continue with point 2 project.
> > 8. Repeat points 5..7 as many times as you see fit.
> > 9. Finally, replace the delivery with the product from point 2.
> 
> This is not really a no-cost strategy; it basically acknowledges that
> the non-Ada code is to be thrown away.  Engineers working on that code
> will rightly feel they are not being recognised, so the quality of the
> first project would be abysmal.  This plus the cost of developing the
> thing twice is not negligible.

I hope you noticed my smiley.
The "no cost" was aimed to point to the hint, not to the project.
In stead of throwing it away, you may add a step nr 10:
Sit down with your programmers and review both the Ada code and the programming_language_for_fast_delivery code. That could be a convenient way to do an inhouse training session in programming. After that you may try to reach some consensus about which code to be the finally delivery product which is maintained. 
Allowing both parts ("Ada_people" and "fast_programming_people") to continue to use their preferred coding language would take care of the not_being_recognised feeling and could finally motivate some "fast_programming_people" to study more in detail how things are done by the "Ada_people". And then ... who knows ... :)

> 
> I would prefer an approach where a partial delivery occurs early to
> please the customer(s), but this partial delivery would be 100% Ada
> and would be partial in functionality, not in quality.
>
> Of course, the vendor ofsuch software needs to educate the customers,
> saying "see, this does only part of what you want, but it is so solid
> you can entrust your life to it.  The other parts of what you want can
> now be implemented quickly and with the same quality level".
> 
> -- 
> Ludovic Brenta.

This is a form of the prototyping approach with early reviewing.

Here is another way of doing early reviewing:
In early 80's I worked for a Fortran community. My co-programmer and I started to use Ada as a pseudo-code language. We made a code review of the Ada code and did not start the detailed Fortran coding until the review had approved the pseudo-code. The Ada code was left in the programs as comments.

Anders