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The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]

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327 points AareyBaba | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 18:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.232s | source
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bri3d ◴[07 Dec 25 22:19 UTC] No.46185823[source]▶
https://web.archive.org/web/20111219004314/http://journal.th... (referenced, at least tangentially, in the video) is a piece from the engineering lead which does a great job discussing Why C++. The short summary is "they couldn't find enough people to write Ada, and even if they could, they also couldn't find enough Ada middleware and toolchain."

I actually think Ada would be an easier sell today than it was back then. It seems to me that the software field overall has become more open to a wider variety of languages and concepts, and knowing Ada wouldn't be perceived as widely as career pidgeonholing today. Plus, Ada is having a bit of a resurgence with stuff like NVidia picking SPARK.

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ecshafer ◴[08 Dec 25 05:43 UTC] No.46188799[source]▶
I've always strongly disliked this argument of not enough X programmers. If the DoD enforces the requirement for Ada, Universities, job training centers, and companies will follow. People can learn new languages. And the F35 and America's combat readiness would be in a better place today with Ada instead of C++.
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1. dexterous ◴[08 Dec 25 14:24 UTC] No.46192553[source]▶
I agree that the "there aren't enough programmers for language X" argument is generally flawed. Acceptable cases would be niches like maintenance of seriously legacy or dying platforms. COBOL anyone?

But, not because I think schools and colleges would jump at the opportunity and start training the next batch of students in said language just because some government department or a bunch of large corporations supported and/or mandated it. Mostly because that hasn't actually panned out in reality for as long as I can remember. Trust me, I _wish_ schools and colleges were that proactive or even in touch with with the industry needs, but... (shrug!)

Like I said, I still think the original argument is flawed, at least in the general case, because any good organization shouldn't be hiring "language X" programmers, they should be hiring good programmers who show the ability to transfer their problem solving skills across the panopticon of languages out there. Investing in getting a _good_ programmer upskilled on a new language is not as expensive as most organizations make it out to be.

Now, if you go and pick some _really obscure_ (read "screwed up") programming language, there's not much out there that can help you either way, so... (shrug!)