Ada95: Around the world theories

[KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays)]

Greetings:

Subject - Tools for the Ada95 programmer and the international job market

Two new pointers to add to your list for Ada tools:

1. http://www.pcada.com/pcada - Home site for Visual Ada95 and 
IntegrAda for Windows95/NT.
2. http://www.ipbath.com/p4.html - Site for IPL's Ada95 software 
engineering tools.

Some of the sites deal the IBM RS/6000 and specialized markets, but I 
consider the DOS/Windows
environments the best since it allows for me to master these products 
at home - instead if at  work!!
I can't seem to get it through to some people but it is good to 
master products at home so you can be more productive at work - if 
using the same tools. Honestly, it is a pain to bring "Mastering GNAT 
in 21 days"
books to work when I can do it at home. Now if I had a Sun UltraSparc 
workstation at home, then I could defend that market too (but lets be 
a little realistic).

For those who are looking for jobs (aren't we always doing that) in 
other countries, Ada-Belgium is 
mentioning a job fair of sorts. Check them out. For those wishing to 
go to Canada (speak French do ya?) you should contact Ora-Canada (see 
postings). Ada-Spain was working on the list of jobs in Spain. The 
jobs in the UK and nearby countries are posted here. SigAda/AdaIC 
cover the majority of American markets. Hopefully, I can add more 
from Japan and Mexico. African areas are using GEOS (boy, this is
an OLD OS since it is fundamentally Windows for small memory 
computers - it was a Commodore 64 OS replacement in the 80's, I still 
have Geoworks Ensemble somewhere). Australian and Singapore jobs are
other areas of interest. Antartica or Iceland anyone? For those into 
Iceland culture and work, Icelandair is a place to start (Iceland's 
major airport branch near Keflavik, Iceland and a port at JFK airport 
in New York). I don't think anyone wants to go to Greenland (see 
Thule or Antartica related issues). A little April fools humor!

Anyhow, Ada jobs are sprouting up in many countries as it is 
evangelized by programmers and universities. C++ will remain in its 
market share, just like COBOL. Like it or not, Ada95 is mainly a U.S. 
government programming language so you find your jobs in government 
or aviation related companies (no, I'm not talking just military or 
defense). Robotics and cybernetics might be a good place to start. I 
haven't researched how well Ada interfaces with Lisp and LOGO type 
programming languages, but I'm sure someone will find a way. Start 
with SigAda or AdaIC and branch out from there.

Just a note to many Ada95 supporters: is it unreasonable to have 
Delphi programming experience
since Ada95 is like a "big sister" to Pascal and Modula-3? Should our 
univerisities teach Pascal/Modula as as a step towards Ada95? Should 
we drop the traditional languages and only teach Lisp/LOGO, COBOL, 
RPG, C++, JAVA/VRML/HTML and Ada95 at our colleges (heck, throw in 
PILOT)? We support many academic or specialized computer languages, 
but what are the languages USED by the job market TODAY!?!? I think 
that is what most students want to know and should know. I think this 
is what those MBA students should realize in MIS courses. Ada95 is a 
general purpose language language, but it was geared for a specific 
purpose (embedded systems). Do you use Ada95 over LISP/LOGO when it 
comes to AI work or turtle graphics? How about saying "Hello World." 
Is that in BASIC, Visual BASIC, Delphi, or  C++? If you or anyone
you know wants a REAL job being a programmer - remind them its not 
how many languages you know, but which ones you need to know to a 
REAL job. When is knowing just C/C++ enough to get by?!?
-Ken