Hi Bill,

There are still DOD and non-DOD programs using Ada,
but more importantly, Ada is still the best solution
for a variety of problems, including the need for
reliable software, and the need for a compiler to find most of
the errors inserted by the programmers instead of finding them
at runtime. Ada is also very competitive in
portability, efficiency, and use as a design language.

This year, 2005, I still usually debug programs
in Ada first, even I deliver in other languages,
so the compiler catches most of the bugs.

It was a mistake to make believe DOD was going
to really standardize on Ada across the board,
but it would not be a mistake to permit Ada
as an alternative among other transportable
languages like Java, python, awk, perl, SQL,
XML, XSLT, HTTPS, Javascript, Applets, and HTML.

However, it would be a mistake to standardize
(or permit) languages that are server-dependent,
because server-dependencies would cascade non-netcentric
software throughout the system, and limit
the system to one manufacturer's software in most cases.

Mike Brenner


Fravel, Bill (N-Zytel) wrote:
> I work supporting a DoD Agency enterprise standards program. We have a
> request to evaluate the status of the Ada programming language. Could
> you point me to information on any metrics that indicate the health and
> status of Ada? For example, information on the revenue generated over
> time for compilers and other Ada tools, the trend in the amount of Ada
> code being delivered over time, etc. 
> 
> I was very involved in the early growth of Ada (I even had a Symbolics
> with an  Ada compiler) but I have not been involved for a number of
> years.
> 
> Thanks - Bill
> 
> Bill Fravel
> LM LSI Program, Hanover, Building 2, Rm. 114
> Zytel Contractor
> 410.796.2677