Re: Air Force shows how meaningless Ada waiver process is

[merlin@annwfn.com (Fred McCall)]

In <35517g$8um@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu Robert Dewar writes:

>As for the claim that the mandate is responsible for the perceived poor
>quality of Ada tools (a broad brush characterization that is not at all
>generally fair -- there are good Ada tools and bad Ada tools around), I
>know this is a popular view from the vendor-bashers club of which you
>seem to be one of the founding members, but apart from a lot of rhetoric,
>I have never seen any convincing argument that this is the case.

Well, having worked with a number of tools (and currently working with
what are probably top-end Ada tools -- at least they cost enough), I
have to agree in part with the 'vendor bashers'.  I've found the quality
of tools to be lower than comparable ones for other languages, as well
as being more expensive.  Compiler messages are cryptic (I expect a lot
more informative messages -- if the language is going to be that picky
and try to force safe practices, the compilers ought to know a lot more
than mine is telling me when an error is found).  Development tools are
buggy and/or difficult to use.  *EVERYTHING* requires more in the way of
resources (including money).  I consider all of this as fall-out from
having a captive audience.  

The Ada Mandate should go.

[No, I'm not going to mention the vendors, except to say that they are
aware of our discontent and seem very interested in trying to address
our problems.  But then, we're talking about a *lot* of money.]

>In fact, you could well argue that the failure of vendors to generate
>sufficient revenue to support continued improvement etc was due to the
>mandate not being enforced well enough, although that's also a hard
>after-the-fact argument to make convincingly.

I'm afraid I find that to be a pretty sad argument, period.  If the only
way that Ada companies could generate sufficient revenue to produce
reasonable tools and support was to have a market that was forced to pay
whatever they asked, regardless of the quality of the tools, then all I
can say is that the language itself has not made a case for its use.

Pascal managed fairly nicely.  Where was their captive market?  C seems
to have done ok, after a somewhat slow start (along with UNIX).  Where
was their captive market?  C++ seems to have taken right off.  Where was
their captive market?

Lots of languages have managed to succeed without a captive market.
Lots have also managed to fail (or only establish niche markets).  If
Ada is the right language to use (after having evaluated all the
technical and cost factors), then that's what people should use.
However, if it's not, then people should be free to use the best, most
cost effective solution.  

If Ada is that solution (over the lifecyle), then SOMEONE IS GOING TO
ACTUALLY HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT.  I've read both the original Ada vs.
C 'studies' and more recent Ada9X vs C++ 'remarks' (I don't think
they're detailed enough or fact-based enough to call them 'studies') and
I still don't find that Ada has made its case.  It all reads as if a
language proponent were writing propaganda.

It's real simple.  Dump the Ada mandate and we'll find out.  I think the
language has been protected long enough.

[Note that Europe is probably going to come up with a different answer.
After all, they liked Algol, too, but it wasn't exactly a rousing
success on this side of the pond.]


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