Re: Why don't large companies use Ada?

In article <784995260snz_at_rippleco.demon.co.uk> Doug Robertson, Doug_at_rippleco.demon.co.uk writes:
>My question is - why do Universities teach Ada - sometimes as
>the main language on courses ?
>--
>Doug

Well i am sure people like Mike Feldman will answer this from the point of view of the educational community, i want to take a shot at it from an industry perspective.

one case in point is a couple of years ago i lost my best Ada engineer to NCR (They are headqaurted here in dayton) to do C/C++ commercial development. I asked her what NCR thought of the fact that she was an Ada engineer with NO C/C++ experience at all. She said that they told her they considered her Ada experience a big plus as they associated Ada with Software Engineering. They were more interested in hiring people who understood mature development processes than in hiring coders who could hack out C. This feedback has been passed back a lot from my contacts in the commercial world.

So the answer to your question from an industrial perspective is because it teaches you good Software Enginnering practices that are far harder to teach than simple language syntax!

best jim

Jim Hopper
Chief Tech Advisor
Systems and Software Technology Division SAIC Received on Tue Nov 22 1994 - 17:43:52 CET