Re: Current status of Ada?

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <ole-hjalmar.kristensen@substitute_employer_here.com>]

>>>>> "AB" == Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> writes:

    AB> On Aug 31, 7:25 am, <adawo...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
    >> I used to do a lot of training and consulting for Lockheed and CSC related
    >> to the Aegis project.   Soon after the Paige memo, Lockheed dictated that
    >> the software for Aegis would be written in C++ instead of Ada.  Almost all
    >> training in Ada stopped, and the programmers were given intensive training
    >> in C++.   I told everyone that it was a big mistake, but my advice was of
    >> little interest to those who were already biased toward C++.   The answer
    >> was, "We can find C++ programmers right out of university CS programs,
    >> but no one teaches Ada in CS."

    AB> Sigh...  My initial reaction to this is that this thinking is just
    AB> totally wrong-headed, and for reasons having nothing to do with the
    AB> languages involved.  I frankly wouldn't expect good results from
    AB> *anyone* who can program in language X because it's what they learned
    AB> in college but couldn't pick up language Y; to me, I wouldn't trust
    AB> someone like that to have a real understanding of "software" or
    AB> "programming", and because of that I wouldn't expect them to write
    AB> good software no matter how good language X is, even if it were Ada.
    AB> Ada is not a good enough language to make up for a fundamental lack of
    AB> software engineering understanding.

    AB> But I could be way off base.

    AB>                            -- Adam


I agree completely. Just an anecdote from the past: In the late
eighties I worked on an automated toll gate system, and among the team
were two junior members. One had EE background and lots of
experience with C. The other had CS background and no experience with
C whatsoever, but a thourough understanding of software
engineering. After a couple of weeks on the project the CS guy
was definitely more productive in terms of delivering code that
worked....

-- 
   C++: The power, elegance and simplicity of a hand grenade.