Advice on selling Ada to a C shop
in [ADA]
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From: Warren on 21 Jun 2010 16:04 Jeffrey R. Carter expounded in news:hvo844$h10$1(a)tornado.tornevall.net: > Warren wrote: >> >> I think you are generally right, until you get to "Quality >> no longer matters". I think it usually _does_ matter, but as >> you say, they've come to accept bugs as "normal". A quality >> product is still the goal from semi-honest companies. Certainly >> from a competitive pov. > > Not necessarily. US defense "cost-plus" contracts are more profitable > the lower the quality (as long as the quality remains acceptable to > the customer, who has been brainwashed to accept fairly low quality). I agree with the "not necessarily" part. But when a company (any company) has enough work already, then getting it right the first time has advantages. OTOH, if you want to milk a contract, then I can see the attraction that bugs may provide. Warren
From: Warren on 21 Jun 2010 16:07 starwars expounded in news:8bd88ec5e6b94d7a9924f620f3c35dab(a)tatooine.homelinux.net: >> I think you are generally right, until you get to "Quality >> no longer matters". I think it usually _does_ matter, but as >> you say, they've come to accept bugs as "normal". A quality >> product is still the goal from semi-honest companies. Certainly >> from a competitive pov. > > That is simply not the case in several markets I am aware of, to the > extent that the management called all the staff together and announced > something like "We are no longer interested in being the best or > putting out the best code. We studied the market and being ... But it is the "being the best is too expensive" part that is being challenged by Ada. If you solved that problem, then it either moves to the next _excuse_ or they actually do become the best. Warren
From: Fritz Wuehler on 22 Jun 2010 01:01 > If you have good developers, they should be curious enough > to find out more about "this Ada" first hand. The non-curious > will just do their jobs, and collect pay cheques. They won't > want any change. The problem is it doesn't help what the developers want. The industry has long transitioned to a market-based or business-centric view of IT, developers are just another nasty cost. There were days when we ruled the earth, but those days are gone.
From: Lucretia on 22 Jun 2010 11:00 Ask them what they don't like about C and developing in C (via a questionnaire if necessary), then show them how to do it in Ada, showing the benefits. This might help get the point across. Luke.
From: anon on 22 Jun 2010 14:01
In <774c25c4-3270-4ffb-ad19-366a0ab16659(a)i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Lucretia <Lucretia9000(a)yahoo.co.uk> writes: >Ask them what they don't like about C and developing in C (via a >questionnaire if necessary), then show them how to do it in Ada, >showing the benefits. > >This might help get the point across. > >Luke. That might be true until Ada 2012! With C like structure being added people will say why switch. The C conditional stops the concept of Ada being portable. Because Ada strictly follows the Ada RM, the Ada libraries calls to the system libraries are the only part that should be different. Which allow all user program to be written and transferred to any Ada compiler without change. Which enforces the main concept of Ada being truly portable. A second problem is until Ada 2012, C is the only common used language that allows functions to have "in out" type of parameters. If functions having the "in out" parameters, was a good idea, you would think then other older languages like Fortran, Pascal would have them. Or even the the most modified language called java would have this concept but it does not. So, why include that into Ada's function, is a mystery unless one is trying to alter Ada into C. Or they the powers that be are trying to destroy Ada because they do not want people to leave C for Ada. Now for the main topic selling Ada over C. Its a hard sell because most shops require that all employees of any project to be replaceable. It is hard to find a replacement programmer that knows Ada, but you can find 100s of C programmers due to the fact that schools are turning out 1000s of programmers that know C inside and out. Because most schools required C and Java, but Ada if they teach it is mostly taught as an elective. |