The Economics of Ada

According to studies, GCC Ada can allow you to develop applications in half the time compared to C.

Ada is a language designed for team development and included with most Linux distributions, well-suited for serious open source development and is superior in many ways to C++ or Java.

Who is using Ada?

The military

Ada origins are unquestionably related to the Department Of Defense of the USA.

This has been a double edged sword for the public acceptance of the language.

Many contractors have developed early resources on the language, but many outside the military saw the language as a military tool and thought it to be under state control.

These views are, of course, unsubstantiated. People with these concerns should take a look into GPS technology before they worry about Ada. Or... you know... THE INTERNET!

Ada is not more of a military tool than Morse code is. The military chooses to keep using it because of its features and their own requirements, but has no control over the language evolution or (absurd claim, I know) the code produced with it.


But let us be honest here: Doesn't it sound awesome to be a Programmer for TANKS AND MISSILES?!?!

Aeronautics and Space

Ada is the language of choice for many on board systems in planes, satellites, and shuttles.

Eurofighter, Boeing, Airbus, Ariane... These all use widely the Ada language to ensure functionality and safety.

Much of the avionics in the new Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” is written in Ada, as is the new air traffic control system in England.

Railway industry

You can also find Ada in the High Speed trains of Spain (AVE) and the metropolitan of New York, Paris...

Banking

BNP Paribas as acknowledged that they use Ada in some of their systems.

I mean... I (at the moment of writting) build software for them, and I have a Blog about Ada. Make your guesses.

Motor

As far as I know, Ada is quite popular in Germany. It was only natural it would reach on board systems for BMW and other big names of the motor industry.

But I also hope that with the advancement of Self Driving cars, her use should only increase. For our own safety. 🤞

The Cost Cut of Ada

How much do we spend?

An analysis on the software market, as well as a few months on the business, can tell you how the costs of software production distribute:

  • 0-15% Design
  • 10-20% Coding
  • 60-80% Cleaning (Depuration/Bug Fixing)
  • 0-20% Testing

The latest an error is found, the more it costs. Sadly, many mistakes in the code are still found by the clients, in the actual market model. This is usually die to lack of investment in Design and Testing, usually costing more money on the long term.

It looks obvious that we potentially can save more than half the costs if we use tools that reduce the coding errors as they are being produced.

Ada is designed so humans make the least possible errors. Software engineering is a human activity.

How much can we save?

Analysis on the workflow with Ada show very different results.

  • 20% Design
  • 60% Coding
  • 10% Cleaning (Depuration/Bug Fixing)
  • 10% Testing

Also shortening to half the time for a production cycle.

The studies compare Ada to C and C++. Those languages are designed on the assumption that the software developer knows at all time what he or she is doing and never makes mistakes. I shouldn't need to say that to this day, that assumption has always been proven wrong, more sooner than latter.