This is a re-posting on behalf of someone else. It is being sent this way to
protect the reputation
of the company involved.
My contact says:
> This is the type of stuff we're fighting here. The next
> e-mail contains my response. If you any specific suggestions
> to debunk some of this, feel free to let me know and I'll pass
> them on.
And this is what he received, that he passed on to me:
> I realize this was not solicited from me but I'd like to provide
> you with my professional opinion regarding the selection of the
> programming language for [project]. I don't want to bore you
> with a lot of technical pros and cons regarding this issue, but
> I strongly believe that you can do the job cheaper and quicker
> if you use c/c++. This choice makes a lot of sense for several
> important reasons.
> First, if the OS is Solaris or HP-UX, you will get for free a very
> extensive set of c libraries for free. These will include
> everything from math libraries to interprocess communications
> facilities to memory management functions. My experience with
> Ada is that the compilers, support libraries, and tools will
> always lag behind what is available for c, especially in the
> Unix environment. You can expect that things which could be
> implemented in c very easily will be very difficult if not
> impossible with Ada. Workarounds will be required. And, it
> will be necessary to use assembly language with Ada in time-
> critical areas. Performance requirements will more easily be
> met using c since c compilers generate more compact code, and
> the programmer has more control over the resultant machine code
> that is generated.
> Second, the evolution of c to c++ has eleviated many of the
> government's concerns which originally drove the development
> of Ada as a separate language. In particular, c++ is now a
> fully object-oriented language. As a consequence, the government
> is no longer requiring Ada on many (most?) programs. And, if we
> use Rational Rose, using its code generation capabilities it may
> be possible to auto-generate a significant number of coding modules
> in c with Rose. I don't believe Rose can generate Ada code.
> Third, although in this business we have a some people who have
> familiarity with Ada, the rest of the programming world is using c.
> It will be easier to find people with the requisite programming
> skills if we use c, and to interest them in working on the project.
> Programmers will always prefer c to Ada.
> Having said that, the job can be done in Ada if necessary. However,
> unless it is a hard requirement for doing so, I recommend that c be
> employed.
|