Re: Support Metrics for Ada / C Projects

["Jeff C," <jcreem@yahoo.com>]

"Sean Cleary" <seanearlyaug@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1c5ac0c6.0408311010.1cde35ca@posting.google.com...
> "Richard  Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net> wrote in message 
> news:<xIOYc.3067$w%6.2389@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>> "Dan Ligett" <ligett@softstarsystems.com> wrote in message
>> news:Vq2dnTTuS7iIZrTcRVn-uA@adelphia.com...
>> >
>> > In 1987, 1988, and 1989 Barry Boehm and Walker Royce reported on a 
>> > version
>> > of Ada COCOMO they developed based on their experience at TRW.  The
>> > presentations were given at the annual COCOMO meetings -- I don't know 
>> > if
>> > they were published anywhere else.
>> >
> not metrics, just a caution:
>
> 5 or more years ago a project I was associated with failed because the
> Ada part of the team was crippled: no run time debug -- all reported
> back stuff was machine/assembly language level. They took to heavily
> instrumenting their code, and got huge printouts of exactly what was
> happening. And had to look through it line by line, loop cycle by loop
> cycle until the problem was found. That was so slow that it killed the
> project. Please do not let this happen to you. Their conclusion was
> that C++ with good tools would have been better. I hope that there are
> now good tools for embedded Ada.
>
> Sean

One time this guy I know used C++ and his dog exploded. Don't let this 
happen to you. I hope dogs are more resilant now.

I hate to feed the trolls but indicating that Ada tools for embedded were 
bad 5 (or more?) years ago is not very helpful. There were bad Ada tools 5 
years ago. There were bad C++ tools 5 years ago. In fact, there are almost 
certainly more bad C++ tools than Ada tools (given that there are more C++ 
tools in existance).

I have been using Ada since 1987. There were good tools then (VAX Ada was 
pretty nice. Even for the embedded DEC OS). I've seen some bad tools too 
(The Merdian Ada to C front end for the i860 comes to mind).