Re: How should DoD further Ada education?

[wheeler@IDA.ORG (David Wheeler)]

>1.  What role should DoD play in expanding software engineering education,
>using Ada as the implementation language?

One of the biggest problems is expense - Ada compilers cost too much
for schools & students.  I think the DoD should give a contract/lump
sum to some Ada compiler vendor(s?) as a ``subsidy'' to either make the
cost free or at least low for students (say $20/student for a PC
compiler or $900 for a medium-sized Unix box).  The DoD doesn't have an
infinite supply of $$$, so a ``subsidy'' for students would probably be
cheaper to the DoD than outright free compilers, and it would fit into
the (current?) tax concept of ``sharing the burden''.

Make sure that these compilers are for platforms that most students have
access to - my suspicion is that that list has PCs, Macs, some
Unix boxes & VMS VAXens.  Since that's more than one platform, you might
even contract >1 vendor (Vendor A for PC's, Vendor B for Unix, etc).
(Yes, I know about DEC's policy to educational institutions).

Make the contact for a set number of years.. you can create another
contract after that, and the cost to DoD will be less if the timeframe
is known.  There's hope that if the market became larger, the cost/compiler
would become smaller.


A basic question needs to be answered: do you need source code for these
compilers distributed to all students?  I doubt it; you want the compilers
so students will learn Ada & more deeply, not how to modify its compiler.
C was used so often in school because it was there, not because most
people wanted to modify the compiler.

Thus, I don't agree with the idea that the DoD should give FSF bucks to
create an ``GNU Ada''.  FSF makes many good products, and having the
source code publicly available is nice, but to my knowledge they DON'T
HAVE an Ada compiler. WHY spend money to develop something if compilers
are ALREADY AROUND?  I'd rather spend some money (which I suspect will
be less) and have the product NOW, when it's needed.

On the other hand, if a GNU Ada _does_ show up, I'll be happy, thank you!


Summary: These Ada compiler vendors have compilers NOW.  If we want
cheap ones for schools & nobody's going to do it without help, let's
subsidize a commercial developer a little bit to get the educational
process going.  Short-term subsidy is cheaper than building your own OR
paying all these training costs later.


--- David A. Wheeler
    wheeler@ida.org