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