Re: Is Ada likely to survive ?

["Paul Van Bellinghen" <pvanbell@mhv.net>]

> I am a little puzzled by (2), hard to find = high market value. But
perhaps
> what you should be looking for anyway is *good* programmers. Good
programmers
> should be easily able to adjust to Ada, and quickly get to the point of
being
> able to take advantage of it. An interesting illustration of this was the
> Airfields project, the first fielded system in Ada 95, which was largely
> written by people with no experience in Ada (I believe some of them were
> in fact COBOL programmers). Despite the fact they were new to the
language
> and were using a quite preliminary version of GNAT, this project was a
great
> success.
>

I think the man is sold on Ada and does not have a problem training "good"
programmers in using Ada for the company's RT embedded apps. However, I
think he is concerned about drawing the best talent to his company when he
needs to staff up. I know we have been having trouble in this area (we use
Ada exclusively for our RTE apps - a step up from assembly language which
we were doing up until a few years ago). Many of the candidates we
interview are concerned about the future of the Ada language. Even the DOD
may be moving away from it (there are advocates for both C++ and Ada in the
DOD). 

I was interviewing for a possible change in companies earlier this year and
I can tell you that these companies are VERY concerned about the languages
you are familiar with. Even though I have had only limited experience in
using C for RTE apps, I insured these companies that a seasoned software
engineer can become proficient in any language since it is just a tool - a
means to an end ( I have been doing this stuff for 22 years - one of those
early EEs that switched to SW) . What matters, I told them, is having
experience in applying good programming techniques to RTE designs. Of
course, it fell on deaf ears.  
 
> As to (3), whether your code is maintainable or not depends on whether it
> is maintainable code. As you note, you know the advantages of Ada, and
one
> of the big advantages is precisely that both the language and the culture
> of programmers using the language encourage the production of
maintainable 
> code. An unmaintainable program in a familiar language is not easier to
> maintain than a maintainable program in almost any language.

Here, I think he is concerned that his programmers, if trained in another
language, can learn Ada in order to maintain these programs.  I don't think
he will have a problem in this area.