Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada

[rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)]

emery@linus.mitre.org (David Emery) writes:
> >From: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
> >I sat in a meeting where an individual (working in one of the military
> >service DoD secretariets) insisted that any university that got
> >federal money (ROTC, research grants, etc.) should be told to teach
> >Ada or have their money taken away.
> 
> Actually, I think there's something to be said for this idea...

(I think there's something to be said for it too...but we probably don't
agree on what should be said.:-)  I think that it's high time Ada was cut
loose from its life-support system of government-mandated ramming-down-
our-throats and allowed to live or die.  I'm serious.  If Ada can't sur-
vive on its own, it's not viable.  (For the record, although I'm not much
of an Ada fan, I do think Ada *can* survive.  It won't be the top
language, but it has its place(s).)

In fact, I think that some of the mandated use of Ada has damaged its
growth.  People look at it and say "oh, that's only for government work,
and it's all tied up in bureaucracy...we don't want it."

>...Even
> more, I think that any DARPA or DoD-funded project should submit a
> waiver request to do their work in something besides Ada...

This is the first step on a slippery path to a very uncomfortable level of
government control.  Again, if Ada is so desirable, why does it have to be
forced?  Let the folks who are doing the research choose the language they
find appropriate to the tasks they need to do.  I can see obvious cases for
using at least C, C++, Icon, LISP, Ada, and assembly language in various
aspects of research.  As for using Ada for the mere sake of single-
language consistency...well, see what Emerson had to say about consistency.

> ...but there are a lot of
> research projects that could be used on gov't systems, except for the
> fact that they're implemented in languages that create a significant
> maintenance/adaptability problem (e.g. C, lisp).  

I don't see that either C or LISP have any inherent maintenance or
adaptability problems.  Seems like it's more a problem of excessive
narrowness or rigidity in gov't systems if they can't handle multi-
lingual software.

Note that the position I'm taking in the latter part of this posting is not
anti-Ada, but anti-single-language.  The idea that one programming language
can be suitable for all programming tasks is bogus from the word go.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Mr. Natural says, "Use the right tool for the job."