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From: arny@wayback.UUCP (Arny B. Engelson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ha ha!
Message-ID: <1262@wayback.UUCP>
Date: 14 Apr 88 14:29:46 GMT
References: <2662@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <2662@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>, neff@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Randy Neff) writes:
> In the April 1988 issue of DefenseScience, page 30, a large contractor is
> advertising job openings, including:
> 
>   "Must be acknowledged expert in Ada community with advanced degrees,
>    minimum of 10 years Ada experience, and professionally published in Ada
>    field"
> 
> Ok, I give up.  How does one get 10 years of Ada experience, since by 
> definition, Ada only exists after Feb 17, 1983, and validated compilers
> (by definition, the only real compilers) did not exist until later.  Even
> the prelanguage was July 1980.  
> 
> Or is this a subtle April fool's joke?

I doubt this is a joke.  More likely, it is a case of a company looking for
the (nearly) impossible.  Although it is possible to fulfill the requirements
(if you were on one of the language design teams in the late 70's, AND
remained active in the Ada arena), there are probably only 10 or so people
that would meet these requirements.  If this company wants one of THEM that
badly, and thinks they can induce one of them to jump ship (bearing in mind
that several of these people have their own companies, or close enough), then
this company may as well write the people directly.

Of course, if they are willing to relax the 10 year requirement to about 7
years, and if magazine articles and conference papers satisfy the publishing
requirement, then that opens the door up to a few dozen other people.  As for
being an "acknowledged" expert, I've never been quite sure who it is that's
supposed to acknowledge you.  Also, what is "Ada experience" anyway?  Is it
coding an embedded application?  Writing instructional text books?  Designing
task scheduler implementations?  Being a member of the language maintenance
committee?  or what?

Anyway, good luck to this company, and to the company (who shall remain
nameless) that is looking for the "Top 10 Ada Programmers".  They'll need it.

  -- Arny Engelson