Newsgroups: comp.object
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!grebyn!ted
From: ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden)
Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity
Message-ID: <1991Mar21.024445.8746@grebyn.com>
Keywords: Looking for a few lazy men
Reply-To: ted@grebyn.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing, Vienna, VA, USA
References: <11966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <EACHUS.91Mar14190050@aries.mitre.org> <1991Mar15.224626.27077@aero.org> <1991Mar16.000624.2513@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1991Mar16.205228.4268@grebyn.com> <jls.669262321@rutabaga>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1991 02:44:45 GMT

In article <jls.669262321@rutabaga> jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:

>1) If those Pascal, C, or C++ programmers were required to operate under
>   DoD-Std-2167/A standards, their productivity would drop by two orders
>   of magnitude automatically. This is not a language issue.

Agreed.  The language issue (Ada) is simply another symptom of the same
disease (terminal stupidity) as the other symptom (2167/A).

>2) SLOC/day tends to decrease drastically as a function of complexity.
>   Complexity depends on a number of factors, including sheer size,
>   number of programmers, number of configurations, number of targets,
>   number of hosts, number of languages, number of contractors, etc etc
>   etc.

Object oriented languages are a partial solution to the problem;  the
best answer American computer science has yet devised.  Pinson and
Weiner's book on C++ and OOP describe means of using these techniques to
eliminate complexity and vastly simplify maintenance of programs.  Too
bad Ada doesn't have these features.  Ada simply adds (greatly) to the
complexity which programmers must deal with, and offers no paybacks or
quid-pro-quo for the added complexity.

>   I've been meaning to ask Mr. "I Live In The Real World" Holden this
>   question for two years: how complex are the systems on which Mr. Holden
>   works? 

One such is the popular VMUSIC multipart musical routine for PCs
(formerly thought to be impossible), available on BBSs.  If programmed
in Ada, it would sound like two or three dogs growling at eachother,
that is, if it could be programmed in Ada.  I doubt it.

If the answer is that he's working with three other guys in a garage
>   writing device drivers for PC's, I'm sorry, but I'm really not very
>   impressed--one should EXPECT high SLOC/day rates for what is, in essence
>   a solved problem (e.g. programming in the small). It is programming in
>   the large that is still a black art for most companies, and it is on
>   such projects that low productivity rates are experienced. That Ada
>   tends to be the language of choice on such projects should not be used
>   against it when the rates are low--the REASON Ada is the language of
>   choice is that other languages, including COBOL, FORTRAN, and C, are
>   simply not up to the job.

Bullshit.  Unix is written in C, WordPerfect, Ami, and most modern
software.  The bulk of American scientific software is in Fortran.  The
bulk of American business software is in Cobol, and there are even
object-oriented versions of Cobol out now.  That makes Ada more of a
dinosaur than Cobol.

>3) I have personally contracted on a 4,000,000 SLOC C/C++ project
>   that was lucky to achieve 3 lines a day, on a GOOD day. 
>   had not, as Mr. Holden claims, been shot in the head--they were just
>   suffering the same liabilities as anybody else who is trying to build
>   extremely large systems using a stone-knives-and-bearskins kind of
>   technology and paradigm.

You need to trade the stone knives in for modern software tools.  A
recent article in the Dobbs Journal (about Smalltalk) provided a stark
contrast with the situation you describe;  it mentioned situations in
which equivalent productivity to programmers putting out 200,000 lines
of code a day could be achieved, and claimed that such will be needed if
todays software problems are to be solved.

>4) I am able to program in Pascal, C, C++, and Ada. Can Mr. Holden make
>   the same claim, or does he damn Ada from, as I suspect is the case,
>   a position of relative ignorance? He certainly SOUNDS ignorant.

I damn Ada from the various horror stories I read and hear regarding it.
I have managed to avoid it in my personal life, other than having to
write interfaces between it and low-level file-handling routines written
in C.  Doing that, I personally watched an Ada compiler take 25 minutes
to compile a 30 line program into a 600K byte executable;  I never saw a
C compiler do that.  
 
>>The really comical thing about this is the way in which Ada gurus cite
>>"productivity" as the main advantage of Ada.

>Productivity rates range from no gain to order of magnitude gains. We
>have lots of success stories backed up by factual accounting data if
>Mr. Holden would care to read them.

I found the tales on the Adawoe BBS to be more of an indication of the
real effects of Ada than the kind of bullshit you're describing.


Ted Holden


