Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!visix!news From: amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity Message-ID: <1991Mar21.235838.15358@visix.com> Date: 21 Mar 91 23:58:38 GMT References: <11966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Mar15.224626.27077@aero.org> <1991Mar16.000624.2513@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1991Mar16.205228.4268@grebyn.com> <1991Mar21.024445.8746@grebyn.com> Sender: news@visix.com Organization: Visix Software Inc., Reston, VA Lines: 27 My own feeling about this whole issue is that the actual choice of language is pretty much a red herring. My own experience has led me to the conclusion that the two factors which most strongly influence software engineering productivity are the self-discipline of the programmers involved and the structure of their surrounding organization. Ada itself is neither good nor bad, merely unwieldy. The same can be said for C++. However, given equivalently good compilers and programming environments, the choice of language is irrelevant. Productivity (for which I find SLOC/day to be a metric of dubious utility at best) depends almost entirely upon the people doing the programming. From a pragmatic point of view, however, there are a lot more (and a lot better) programming tools for supporting C and C++ than there are for Ada (likewise with programmer experience). For projects in which the development budget is a valid concern, they are quite often more appropriate for the job than Ada would be. On the other hand, if the DoD is paying you huge amounts of money to develop software for them, Ada may well be a better choice. The reasons remain pragmatic, not based on inherent advantages of one language or the other. -- Amanda Walker amanda@visix.com Visix Software Inc. ...!uunet!visix!amanda -- X Windows: It could be worse, but it'll take time...