Many believe the greatest benefit of Ada is that it encourages software engineers to explore new design approaches leading to higher quality software. However, Ada's primary goal is to reduce the life cycle cost of software. Furthermore, the relationship between cost and modern software techniques is not always evident. This paper addresses the cost of Ada software. How long does it take an engineer to develop software when using Ada and modern software engineering techniques? How much computational capacity does Ada require? This paper provides answers to these questions based on data from the B-2 Aircrew Training Device (ATD). Lines of code, development time, and computational resources are provided for selected B-2 ATD software systems. Key contributing factors include the cost of training engineers in modern software techniques and the impact caused by developing and using more modern software tools. This paper identifies key factors found on the B-2 ATD to be influential in affecting today's software cost and explains what we are doing to reduce this impact in the future.
Software Metrics, ADA, and the B-2 ATD
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