From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,f49c8f164340c377 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news4.google.com!out03a.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in04.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.net!newsdst01.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr25.news.prodigy.net.POSTED!cfe18fef!not-for-mail From: Gary Scott Organization: Home User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Current status of Ada? References: <1187726191.464593.16480@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com> <1187850312.375316.57440@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.94.0.252 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr25.news.prodigy.net 1188161756 ST000 68.94.0.252 (Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:55:56 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:55:56 EDT X-UserInfo1: Q[R_@SZETRRACPD[MZHLN\TDFZ\@@FXLM@TDOCQDJ@_@FNHCYFWUQBKZQLYJX\_ITFD_KFVLUN[DOM_A_NSYNWPFWNS[XV\I]PZ@BQ[@CDQDPCL^FKCBIPC@KLGEZEFNMDYMKHRL_YYYGDSSODXYN@[\BK[LVTWI@AXGQCOA_SAH@TPD^\AL\RLGRFWEARBM Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:55:56 GMT Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:1566 Date: 2007-08-26T20:55:56+00:00 List-Id: adaworks@sbcglobal.net wrote: > "Harald Korneliussen" wrote in message > news:1187850312.375316.57440@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com... > >>On Aug 22, 2:53 am, "Jeffrey R. Carter" >> wrote: >> >> >>>And some projects using Ada commercially consider it a competitive >>>advantage and keep it secret. >> >>Are you sure? It seems to me it's in the companies' best interests to >>say whether they are using Ada, since Ada developers are tricky to get >>hold of. Keeping it secret seems to me both difficult (what do you >>write in the job ads?) and counterproductive. >> > > I once had a commercial client that required a non-disclosure agreement > about their use of Ada because of competitive reasons. In their view, > their competitors would use this fact against them as a sales gimmick. The > fear was that the competitors would ridicule them for "using a language > that was not part of the mainstream and had been rejected by the Department > of Defense." > > Note that, when Emmett Paige wrote his famous memo abrogating the > Ada mandate, the memo was widely interpreted as the equivalent of the > DoD admitting that Ada was a mistake, and direct abandonment of its > use for future DoD projects. Although that was not the intent of the > memo, that interpretation is now widespread both within and outside > the DoD. > > It is unfortunate that the memo was written in a way that left it open to > Ada's enemies to misinterpret. The damage done is widespread. The > educational institution where I teach once required Ada of its students. > Now the language is almost non-existent except in a two-week portion > of an eleven week class that I teach. No one else in our computer science > department gives it any credibility at all. > > The real-time software projects are now being written in Java. The funding > for research will not support anything with the Ada language involved. The > newly-hired faculty members regard Ada as a quaint era of the past, not > something to be taken seriously. > > I have been an Ada advocate for about twenty years, but it is becoming clear > that, without some miracle or absent someone in the DoD coming to their > senses, the use of the language will continue to decline both in the commercial > world and in the DoD. When I was still consulting and teaching Ada, one of > my major clients, a DoD contractor building one of our major weapons systems, > switched from Ada to C++. It was a massively stupid decision. But the man > who was previously in charge, who understood the value of Ada, retired. His > successor knew little about Ada and was a strong advocate of C++. Without > the mandate in place, he could blithely ignore the wisdom of using Ada and > demand that everything be written in C++. > > I asked the question, at the time, "What makes you think you can use a language > such as C++ that is inherently error-prone, and expect a result that is > error-free." > My credibility suffered from my resistance to C++. The more I saw of, and > continue to see of, C++, the more I realize how dangerous the language is and > how wrong-headed it is to use C++ for military software systems, but > my opinion carries no weight. At the same time, in an effort to offset the > known dangers of C++, many DoD organizations and their contractors have > chosen Java. This is also a dumb decision, but the new real-time features > of Java make it more difficult to clarify the points that make Ada a better > choice. > > There is no single strong advocate for Ada at present. There is no powerful > corporate sponsor as there is for Java. There is no major Ada project that > is visible to the larger community of software developers. The language is > seen as "old-fashioned" and out-of-date by those who have graduated within > that past ten to fifteen years. It is an oddity. > > The damage to Ada was the result of many factors. The AJPO never quite got > it right. The DoD certainly never got it right. The infighting between Ada > vendors > never helped. The fact that Ada compiler vendors charged outragesous prices > for > their compilers helped to discourage commercial organizations from using Ada: > COBOL, C, C, Pascal, were more affordable. Most PC versions of Ada had > less capability for building PC applications directly than BASIC. With > exception > of the Meridian Compiler, there were no good libraries for creating MS-DOS > applications. Even Meridian got it wrong by defining the data type for system > address incorrectly. > > With Ada 95, the designers and contributors to the design of the language did > get > a lot of things right. Ada finally became a language for the ordinary > programmer. > The time was also right. A lot of people renewed their interest in the > language. > Then, grabbing defeat from the jaws of potential victory, the letter from Mr. > Paige > muddled the entire decision-making process. A delay of two or three years > before writing that kind of letter might have made a difference. Instead, the > developer community ran as fast as it could to find other options. > > JSF is being developed in C++. A truly dumb decision. Missile Defense Agency > has completely abandoned Ada. > > As noted in an earlier post, I made an inquiry some time ago about the current > state > of Ada usage. I am constrained from publishing the names of projects that are > using > Ada, but I was suprised to find that there are still quite a few. > Unfortunately, such > constraints do not help to promote the awareness that Ada is real and continues > to > be a valuable tool for building software systems. I promote it whenever I can > for > my own students and have had thesis students do their M.S. thesis using Ada. I > make it clear in all of my software engineering classes that Ada continues to be > the > most effective language when one needs to take an engineering view of the > software > process. > > But individual professors of computer science are of little importance in the > effort to > improve the state of Ada utilization and awareness. We need some kind of larger > effort. The Ada Resource Association (or whatever it is currently called) has > proven > ineffectual. The AdaIC web site, while in capable hands, has no pro-active > role. > And the Ada compiler publishers seem to be ashamed to admit, broadcast, or > let anyone know that they have Ada products. When is the last time that > Rational > had any information about its Ada compiler at a conference or trade-show? When > is the last time that any Ada compiler publisher had a booth at a trade-show? > When > have we last seen any publicity about the value of Ada for some major project? > Where > has anyone seen an Ada textbook for sale in a bookstore? Even the > computer-centric > bookstores have no books on Ada -- none. > > As long as Ada remains invisible the number of projects will decline. As long > as officials > in the DoD believe that Ada is not supposed to be used for military projects > anymore > (many believe just that), Ada will be in decline. > > This is truly unfortunate. Ada continues to be the best hope as a language for > software > engineering. In my view, it is still the best language for use in > safety-critical, mission-critical, > and military software systems. It offers a lot to commercial software > developers, as well. > How we get that message out, now that there is no powerful sponsor and no > effective > Ada consortium, I don't know. At one time, I used to write a lot of articles > about the > value of Ada for software magazines such as JOOP, HP Professional, Embedded > Systems > Programming, and others. That seemed to help a little. I have yet to see > anyone publish > an article about the Ada 2005 standard -- even in DoD publications. It is as > if it never > happened. > > I no longer have the time to devote to Ada since my role has changed. I am no > longer > directly involved in Ada, though I continue to promote it whenever I can. I > can still > teach it in some of my classes, but I get the question from my colleagues, "Why > are > we bothering with that old language?" At present, I am the last hold-out for > keeping > Ada in some small part of our curriculum. When I am gone, Ada will also be > gone. Or > as newer faculty members take over my courses, Ada will vanish entirely. > > I wish I could outline an action plan instead of posting a tale of lament. > Perhaps someone > from this forum can come up with a solution for improving the situation. I > wonder if > someone might write and publish some articles about the new standard and the > continuing > viability of the language? Maybe we can get someone in the DoD, someone with > a brain > in their head who understands software, to reinvigorate and reinstate the > interest and > committment to Ada. I would hope so, but it is a faint hope at this point. > > Richard Riehle > > Correction, JSF does use a mixture of Ada and C++. -- Gary Scott mailto:garylscott@sbcglobal dot net Fortran Library: http://www.fortranlib.com Support the Original G95 Project: http://www.g95.org -OR- Support the GNU GFortran Project: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows it can't be done. -- Henry Ford