Re: Open Systems closed to Ada?

[gvls1!lonjers@louie.udel.edu (Jim Lonjers)]

In article <1992Dec1.230732.13822@fcom.cc.utah.edu> val@news.ccutah.edu (Val Ka
rtchner) writes:
>While I agree that it is within the U.S. government's rights to make
>certain policy decisions, it doesn't mean that whatever decisions are
>made are automatically Good Things.

. . . and there is the counter problem that some people think that when the
   government makes a decision it must be a Bad Thing, especially when it
   is the DoD.

Can we clear one item up?  The "government decision" is not a mandate, nor
is it a policy which extends outside of the government.  It is pure and
simple a financial/business decision, much like those made by our various
commercial ventures.  And, like most decisions that affect a large
organization, it can be picked apart from many different angles.  As a
business decision, however, it was probably one of the best the DoD has
made in terms of software procurement.

>My opinion is that the first language that a programmer should learn is
>some form of assembler.

I sure agree with this.  I cannot count the number of times I have had to
explain the costs of various programming paradigms by dropping it to this
level.  Without this knowledge (and some concept of what today's
compiler optimization is capable of), the ability to write code which is
both, highly abstract and highly efficient to execute is impossible.

>I do agree that it is
>less efficient than C/C++.

This is absolutely and totally false.  References available on request.
You can add me to the folks who will never agree with you on this point.

>Remember when the Ada community thought that "object orientedness" was a
>Bad Thing?

No, I have never heard this opinion in the Ada community.  You will have to
remind us of when that was.

>Ada and C/C++ are different philosophies that will not grow together.

But, above (in a part that I prematurely pruned out), you said they were
definitely growing together.