I was an Ada programmer for about 4 years in the aerospace industry.
I remember my last Ada project. It was run as a traditional 'waterfall' project (In the early 2010s). I sat in my hole (cubicle, in the very center of a massive cube farm) coding away on a simulation model for a satellite's attitude control system, while the other devs worked on their own modules in silence and isolation. Integration and testing was pushed all the way to the end of the project.
I was a scumbag contractor, hence I was not allowed to see the complete code base like the regular employees were, so I couldn't, say, do a complete build to verify my stuff worked (because some of the libraries I needed to build my module I wasn't allowed access to). So I was armed with the Ada compiler as one of my only tools (I just had to ignore the link errors. Though, I was able to code up a few tests for some of the algorithms I was able to isolate, even though unit testing was neither expected nor encouraged, as it did nothing to increase my SLOC numbers -- i.e., "wasting time").
I worked slowly and deliberately (getting constant flak for my SLOC numbers not going up fast enough -- and apparently if you ever reduce your SLOC, you've made negative progress), and at the end when I passed my code off to the 'build master' to my amazement my module built and largely just worked. I have to give credit to the language -- it caught a ton of stuff at compile time.
Suddenly I was no longer a slacker (Gee, thanks). At the end of that project I left and never touched Ada again. I now (probably unfairly) associate Ada with old-school waterfall-driven software development and dank, dark offices with flickering, soul-sucking fluorescent lights.
I do remember entering a negative number one week on the manager's "status spreadsheet (an excel spreadsheet on a network share that he asked everyone to edit)" next to my name. Of course he came by asking for an explanation, and if memory serves had me enter the number of lines deleted as a positive number, so that the 'metrics' he reported up the chain didn't look bad.
I remember my last Ada project. It was run as a traditional 'waterfall' project (In the early 2010s). I sat in my hole (cubicle, in the very center of a massive cube farm) coding away on a simulation model for a satellite's attitude control system, while the other devs worked on their own modules in silence and isolation. Integration and testing was pushed all the way to the end of the project.
I was a scumbag contractor, hence I was not allowed to see the complete code base like the regular employees were, so I couldn't, say, do a complete build to verify my stuff worked (because some of the libraries I needed to build my module I wasn't allowed access to). So I was armed with the Ada compiler as one of my only tools (I just had to ignore the link errors. Though, I was able to code up a few tests for some of the algorithms I was able to isolate, even though unit testing was neither expected nor encouraged, as it did nothing to increase my SLOC numbers -- i.e., "wasting time").
I worked slowly and deliberately (getting constant flak for my SLOC numbers not going up fast enough -- and apparently if you ever reduce your SLOC, you've made negative progress), and at the end when I passed my code off to the 'build master' to my amazement my module built and largely just worked. I have to give credit to the language -- it caught a ton of stuff at compile time.
Suddenly I was no longer a slacker (Gee, thanks). At the end of that project I left and never touched Ada again. I now (probably unfairly) associate Ada with old-school waterfall-driven software development and dank, dark offices with flickering, soul-sucking fluorescent lights.