Re: How to Make Ada more widely used?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.]

In <C83xAE.MMs@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil> shimeall@cs.nps.navy.mil (timothy shimea
ll) writes:

>In article <SRCTRAN.93Jun2233244@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:
>>   Simple.  Drop the Ada Mandate.  It is an artificial distortion of the
>>marketplace that has sheltered Ada from competition with other languages.

>Tell us Greg: If the Ada Mandate is dropped, how is DoD to retain
>the small-language-set benefits?  

Have there been any believable studies to indicate that these benefits
have indeed been received?  In other words, is there any credible
evidence that the likely gains and savings made are not wiped out by
the higher cost of Ada compilers and development tools?

>Factor into your calculations that
>there IS NO STANDARD for many commonly-used languages (incl. C and C++)

Not true.  There has been an ANSI and ISO standard for C for some time
now.  There is pretty much a de facto standard for C++, minus a few
bells and whistles.  

>, and, in fact, there are large portability problems for non-trivial 
>non-Ada-based applications across even rather similar environments.  

This also happens with Ada-based applications, if you are moving from
one operating system to another, does it not?  Oh, it may be more (or
less) difficult in any specific case, but anyone who thinks they are
going to take a major program that pushes the hardware and OS and
simply move the source to a different OS and recompile is kidding
themself (because if they're pushing limits, they are going to be
using some machine-specific things -- in which case the ease or
difficulty of porting has more to do with what those are and how well
they were isolated (which Ada helps in the case of developers who
aren't used to keeping that sort of thing foremost in their minds)). 

>The fact of the matter is that Ada is MEANT to be a niche language.
>The language sponsors, DoD, don't much care (except where it 
>impacts their costs) if Ada EVER is a huge commercial success.
>Even as it is today, it is VERY useful in the DoD context.

As are lots of other languages.  The point behind the complaints about
a niche language with a significant learning curve is that it makes
development significantly more costly than it has to be to get the
same kinds of benefits.

>				Tim
>Disclaimer: The preceding is NOT an official statement for any
>governmental or nongovernmental organization.  It is a personal
>opinion of the author.

This obviously is the case for me, as well.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.