Speaking of battle-ready, the DoD this week allows that last week's delivery of precision munitions to Iraq wasn't very precise, although they won't tell us how imprecise on account of it's top-secret, like maybe the Iraqi's can't count how many of the 20 targets were hit. The DoD says that it looks like a software error. Ada inside??? Al JF Harrison wrote: > > > Do not condemn successful software just because it has bugs. It would not > > be successful if it did not provide some service that the purchaser wants. > > > > Sorry for the rant. > > > > Roger Racine > > > Here's my blather. I'm a novice Ada programmer, by the way. > > "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." Gen. George > S. Patton > > business as war > > capture defensible ground > > Sucky software wins the battle today and the war tomorrow, but "good > enough" software wins the battle and the war. Looks like Ada developers are > good at winning the first battle on big, hard to manage projects, but that > Ada isn't handy for rapid prototyping (versus quick and dirty C > programmers). Could there be an ugly-headed step-child of Ada to be used > for rapid prototyping, or is that already C? Perhaps a rapid-development > Visual Ada environment wouldn't help much on big projects, but would make a > difference for quick and dirties. Perhaps that should be the goal for a > "new" Ada development environment - churning out quick and dirties - and the > resultant code would still be Ada. If the project merited further work, it > could be restarted from scratch using existing methods, but the code > generated by the quick and dirty interface (QDI) might be a useable > foundation. Ada programmers might derive income or notoriety by developing > templates and plugins/extensions to the QDI for specific project types or > activities. > > Caveat: > Using such a QDI might degrade the traditional software engineering > practices Ada developers pride themselves in, if novice Ada > developers/hobbyists learn Ada through using the QDI alone. That, however, > would be the difference between a Junior and Senior Ada developer. Jr. only > knows how to play with the QDI, whereas Sr. is a real software engineer. > I'm referring to some kind of certification practice. Without > certification, the novices that emphasize Sr. level practices over Jr. level > ones will probably get fired in the real world, and the Jr.'s will get > promoted to senior level positions simply due to success. Success is great, > but just because they succeeded with the QDI doesn't mean they'll be > qualified to manage major software projects that require sound engineering > principles. In other words, an effective Sniper or Sergeant doesn't > necessarily make an effective Captain or General. > > "Ada: Battle Ready." > > JF Harrison