Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!zodiac!joyce!sri-unix!orawest!ejs
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: How widespread is Ada now?
Message-ID: <285@orawest.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 88 00:20:57 GMT
References: <917@naucse.UUCP> <3369@cs.utexas.edu> <1039@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: ejs@ord.UUCP (e john sebes)
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, West; Menlo Park, CA
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I also heard a rumor that the Navy isn't psyched about Ada
(if you attach any meaning at all to such a broad statement),
but it was a couple of years ago. At the time, I was working for
a contract software development firm that was starting to market as a
product an Ada PDL and document generation package.

One of the customers was a large company with a contract from the Navy
to develop software to aid in the specification of the configuration of
ships (like, the whole boat). It was a large project with dozens of
designers working in a one or two year design phase. They were using
Ada (augmented by the above-mentioned product) as a design language, but
were planning on implementing the design in an old Navy programming
language (CSP-2, or somethign like that). The idea was that the Navy
didn't want to have to get the contractor to make all scores of their
CSP-2 (or whatever) programmers learn Ada, but they wanted the design to
be tuned to implementation in Ada, JUST IN CASE things changed over the
course of the years, such that the funder had to require this of the
contractor.

It seemed quite curious at the time, but I have no idea how it turned out.

--John