Re: Ada

[billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )]

From rowe@cme.nist.gov (Walter Rowe):
> Sure, but so is Pascal (originally designed as a learning tool), but
> its not highly used outside of Academia just like Ada is not highly
> used outside of DoD.  Ever wonder why?

   The fact that good production-quality compilers have only been
   avaliable for the last year or two probably has a lot to do with it...

   Fortunately, as the IEEE Software article I cited demonstrates, 
   commercial use and acceptance of Ada is growing rapidly, both in 
   the US and overseas.  Non-DoD US users include General Electric, 
   Boeing Commercial Airplane, etc.; other companies, such as Arthur 
   Anderson, are considering converting to Ada now that the appropriate 
   compilers and tools are available.  Not because the DoD is using it,
   but as a simple result of business and engineering considerations. 

   Considering that the largest corporation in the WORLD, Nippon 
   Telegraph and Telephone, has maintained a committment to Ada 
   since 1982 (!!!), I'd say that Ada is certainly making excellent 
   progress in the commercial environment.  The fact that the
   DoD is requiring all its information systems work to be done
   in Ada is creating a great deal of infrastructure (e.g., the
   RAPID library of reuseable Ada information systems software
   components), which will further stimulate commercial use.  

   The experience so far has been that "once a team moved to Ada,
   they stayed with Ada.  Once Ada had been successfully used within
   a company, its use proliferated to other projects within the 
   company and to subcontractors and suppliers of that company within
   the industry."  (Ada Letters, Vol. VIII, No. 5, page 15).  Given
   that high-quality compilers have only been available for a relatively
   short period of time, and that the US Ada market was already US $1.25 
   billion as of September 1987, I think the progress so far has been 
   quite substantial.  Watch comp.lang.ada for continued updates.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu