(j3.2006) Ada committee doesn't do business with INCITS (or IEEE)

[Van Snyder]

On Tue, 2017-12-05 at 19:56 +0000, Bill Long wrote:

> I don?t see how we avoid the image of having become just as dead and
> irrelevant as Ada.  


WG9 ARG has (at least) fifteen members.

Ada was never intended for use for scientific and engineering
programming, video games, databases, or web pages.  It was intended from
the start for high reliability.  It's difficult to say "high
reliability" and "C++" in the same sentence without laughing (or
crying).

Ada Europe / Reliable Software Technologies conferences typically have
100-150 attendees.  At this year's week-long 22nd annual meeting there
were two parallel sessions with 25 papers presented.  When was the last
Fortran conference with more than 10 attendees?  The closest thing to
that have been workshops organized every three years or so by IFIP WG
2.5, but the only Fortran committee members I've ever seen at those
meetings were John Reid and Brian Smith.

Cassini flight software was written in Ada, not C++, and ran flawlessly
in 26 processors for twenty years.  Developers originally wanted to use
C++, but soon found the Ada compiler was diagnosing problems that would
never have been found if C++ had been used, resulting in failure of a
$billions mission.

Reliability is also important for scientific and engineering software.
There are important things Fortran can copy from Ada (and Eiffel).
Unless we want users to continue the SGI priorities: Get it out, get it
fast, get it right (and they never seemed to have time for the last
one).

If Fortran doesn't modernize (i.e., if we sit on our hands again)
Fortran will become more irrelevant than Bill's perception of Ada.  And
by "modernize" I mean serious computer science, not just copying a fad
from C or C++.


> I think that if INCITS does something bad enough that Fortran, C, and
> C++ ALL decide to leave, then it is reasonable to consider our
> options.  So far, they have not crossed that line. 


A 550% increase in participation dues since 1997 is pretty close to that
line.  That averages almost 9%, with a 15% increase this year.  All the
"help" that's supposed to buy from INCITS just makes our work more
difficult.  The membership agreement was almost the straw that broke the
camel's back at JPL.  It was very difficult for Lynn to convince the
lawyers that INCITS isn't an advocacy group, even though the membership
agreement says ITIC is one.  Lawyers and bean counters were worrked that
if a membership agreement was signed for me, all the scientists and
engineers will want JPL to pay their AGU and IEEE membership dues.


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