Re: Comparing languages in implementation of OO projects

Jay wrote: 
Back when I did a complete lifecycle project, using Ada83 for the
implementation, the understanding we had was that Ada was
"object-based", and as such provided the strong typing/abstraction,
data hiding, and modularity that, coupled with our implementation of
inter-object communication (message queues) and language-supported
tasking, provided a fairly graceful, maintainable, and decently
performing object-oriented implementation.  My original cast into these
hazardous waters of opinion was to see if any individual, corporation,
or institution had done a quantified trade study, using metrics from OO
projects comparable in size, complexity, etc., but realized in various
languages.  I'm working in a CMMI Level 5 (purportedly) organization,
yet our process folks don't have the sort of figures I was hoping for.
Thanks for the links and well-intentioned suggestions, and instruct
each other with gentleness...  (for every student is teacher, every
teacher student)


J,

I'm emailing this directly to you and not to the group, as I'll be "naming and shaming" the company I work for... ;-)

I'm with a "well known" UK defence contractor. We too are a "level 5" (CMM not sure about CMMI Level). And I too have used "object-based" rather than 'real' OO (from about 1988 .. 1995). This is usually based on Steven Wards mapping of RTSA to an OOD. To be honest, I've always found that it worked pretty well. There were a few occasions when the notation wasn't as 'powerful' as perhaps we'd have liked but nothing that just adding a comment to a diagram didn't clear up.

We too do not gather these metrics but, to be fair, for CMM you don't just have to collect the metrics - you have to _understand_them_ AND _use_them_! And that's beyond the grasp of many a QA engineer and even my current s/w manager... :-(

All the best in your search. I understand the pull of C++ (esp. from a CV point of view) but please don't be put off having a look at Ada95 (soon to be Ada2005) or any other more 'unusual' language. They often are much more elegant in their solutions and nearly always a gazillion times more portable than C++. And 3/4 of the time cheaper over any project with any 2 of:

1) 5+ engineers;
2) 2+ targets;
3) 2+ years to develop;
4) >20 kSLOCS

If you want to add something more marketable to your CV, have a look at one of the real-time Java environments - www.aonix.com. If you are in the UK and you talk to them (specifically David Humphries) mention my name!

Cheers

-- Martin
.

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