STANFINS Misinformation

[William Thomas Wolfe, 2847]

>From ted at grebyn.com (Ted Holden):
> From: William Thomas Wolfe @hubcap.clemson.edu
>>   That's interesting, Ted... according to the Proceedings of the
>>   Eighth Annual National Conference on Ada Technology (p. 140),
>>   STANFINS-R was completed on time and within budget, [...]
>
> I'm not going to call people liars over the net, Mr. Wolfe, but one of us is
> misinformed and I don't think it's me.  I have friends who work with
> that project and they tell me it's at least 100% over budget and between
> 8 and 20 months behind schedule, according to your point of view.  

   I suggest that you directly contact the person in charge of ensuring
   the satisfaction of cost/scheduling constraints for STANFINS-R by
   its implementor, Computer Sciences Corporation:

      Mr. William H. Pitts
      Chief, Field Accounting Systems Division
      Department of the Army
      U.S. Army Information Systems Software Development Center
      Fort Benjamin Harrison
      Indianapolis, IN  46249-0901

      (317) 543-6595

   The source is: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual National Conference
   on Ada Technology, page 140, column 2, paragraph 2, last sentence.

>>   Regrettably for Mr. Holden, object-oriented Ada is available right
>>   now.  Software Productivity Solutions has a product called Classic
>>   Ada which serves as a Smalltalk-based object-oriented preprocessor
>>   for Ada-language software developers.  Another object-oriented approach
>>   along the lines of Zetalisp's Flavors (InnovAda) will soon be on the
>>   market as well.  But Ted Holden will never let reality interfere with
>>   his point of view, as he has so repeatedly demonstrated.
>  
> And you know perfectly well that Ada code thus generated would be
> unmaintainable (as Ada code), 

   Not necessarily.

> ungodly slow (as if ordinary Ada wasn't),

   Which it isn't (neither Classic Ada nor Ada itself are slow).

> and against the religion.  

   Ada, unlike research languages, is subject to systematic, controlled
   revision in accordance with the 10-year revision cycle associated with  
   ISO standards.  Preprocessors such as Classic Ada are designed to meet
   immediate requirements for which the 10-year revision point is too distant. 


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe at hubcap.clemson.edu