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Subject:
From:
John McCormick <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Team Ada: Ada Programming Language Advocacy
Date:
Tue, 19 May 2009 14:51:34 -0500
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Hello Georg,

At 11:32 AM 5/19/2009 +0200, Georg wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I am preparing a general suggestion for improvement into the 
>group-wide ideas and innovation management system of my employer. 
>For this I would like to back up me suggestion with some articles 
>about the advantages of using Ada.

It look like you have already checked the AdaIC web 
site.  http://www.adaic.org/


>What is missing are articles relating to the following:
>- There are enough Ada programmers available.

AdaCore's GAP (GNAT Academic Program) now has 150 member universities 
in 35 countries.  Each of these universities uses Ada someplace in 
their curriculum.   They must document this every 
year.  http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/



>- Ada can be used with more success than other languages. There was 
>a software development project at a university which asked a first 
>group of students to use C (not successful) and asked a second group 
>of students using Ada (succeessful).

I've turned this project into a career :-).  Students design and 
implement the code to monitor and control a large model railroad.  It 
is about 12,000 lines of Ada and includes everything from device 
drivers to high level collision prevention logic.   In the past 17 
years, 85% of my Ada teams have successfully completed a minimum set 
of requirements.  In 8 years of using C, no team finished the minimum 
requirements.  One team attempted the project in C++ and one team in 
Java.  Neither succeeded.  You can see a video (which includes the 
completion statistics) of the lab at http://www.cs.uni.edu/~mccormic/RealTime/

Here are my latest publications with the statistics.

J.W. McCormick, Ada and Software Engineering Education: One 
Professor's Experiences, Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGAda Annual 
International Conference, 91 - 95, (2008).  Reprint of Ada User 
Journal article.

J.W. McCormick, Ada and Software Engineering Education: One 
Professor's Experiences, Ada User Journal, Volume 29, Number 3, 202 - 
206 (2008).

J.W. McCormick, Model Railroading and Computer Fundamentals, Journal 
of Computer Science Education, Volume 17, Number 2, 129-139 (2007).

J.W. McCormick, Instrumentation Education Through Model Railroading, 
IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement, Volume 19, Number 10, 40-45 (2006).

J.W. McCormick, We've Been Working on the Railroad: A Laboratory for 
Real-Time Embedded Systems, SIGSCE Bulletin, 37, 530-534 (2005).


>- Links with content (e.g. research) that proofs that development 
>with Ada results in less defects than progams in other languages

If you'll include SPARK, have a look at the Praxis web site for 
published articles..  http://www.praxis-his.com/sparkada/

John

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