By
Bob Brewin
This is a real blast from the software past: Last Friday, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, awarded a contract for 25 copies of an Ada compiler to Adacore, a small business located in New York City.
For those who do not remember -- or were too young for it to matter -- in 1987 the Defense Department mandated the use of Ada code in all new software projects, based on the idea that Ada code is highly stable and resusable, and eventually would save a ton of money as folks pulled plug-and-play bits of code out of a library.
Compliance with this requirement was about the same as BMW drivers paying heed to STOP signs in suburban Washington, and in 1997, Defense dropped the mandate in favor widely of more available commercial code.
The Naval Undersea Warfare Center did not say what it uses Ada code for, but it did say that Adacore came in way under the other two bidders, with a price of $86,700 versus $319,355.20 from IBM and $209,280 form Green Hills Software.
I imagine I will now here from a more than a few folks who will let me know that Ada is alive and well in many other projects.