Re: DARPA admits Ada gets in the way

[seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman)]

In article <25222@oasys.dt.navy.mil> tdsmith@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Timothy Smith) 
writes:
>
>    DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) directs basic RESEARCH
>projects. In general, DARPA funds high risk/high payoff projects.  THey
>do not DEVELOP hardware.  Once the concept is proven DARPA transitions
>it to some other part of the DOD for development into a military system.
>    There is no contradiction betwee DARPA wanting to keep it's options
>open and the rest of DOD wanting to have systems written in Ada.

In a democracy I see no problem with this. It's not clear to me why DARPA
should make a pronouncement on the mandate. Washington is like that: a
guy (who won't speak for attribution) expresses his own opinion, claiming
he speaks for his sub-agency. (If he were really speaking for DARPA, why
won't he let his name be used?) Then the rest of us think that the sub-agency
(DARPA, in this case), speaks for the whole agency (DoD, in this case).
It's all part of the Washington power game. Greg's assertions notwithstanding,
little of this has much to do with Ada. 

>>Like Mike Feldman noticed quite recently, and as I have posted based on
>>analyzing all of the entries in my government software database, Ada is
>>not being used, called for, and hired for.
>
[stuff deleted]

Oh, all right. Since you paraphrased me, I'll chime in again. Ada fan
though I am, I am no fan of the mandate. It's diversionary and
ultimately foolish. DoD can make Ada stick to the projects for
which it needs Ada, without Congress getting its fingers in the pie.

I have said since the mandate was cranked into the law, in the middle
of the night in 1990 just before the last election, that the mandate
would allow Ada vendors to be lazy - because their market was protected -
and cause many people to spend their days and nights to keep the mandate
in the law, instead of working on substantive matters. It's clear to me
now that my understanding of the Washington game was reasonably good,
even if I am a pointy-headed academic. Watch them scurry to keep Congress
from deleting the mandate. Whatever happens will happen in the middle
of the night when nobody is looking. That's life in the fall of even-
numbered years.

Crazy idealistic eggheaded professor that I am, I actually believe that
Ada can stand on its own, without a legal mandate. Closed-minded people
will resist it, as such people always resist change. Open-minded people
will see that Ada offers them something. 

The mandate is a bit like the auto industry in microcosm. Lee Iacocca
demands protection from Toyota even as he imports millions of Mitsubishis.
The Ada vendors want the mandate to protect them from the yellow peril
of C++, even as they diversify into C++ because they can't figure out
how to make a big profit from Ada.

If the vendors of compilers and tools will get to work building quality 
products, and sell them at a fair price (not the order-of-magnitude price 
difference found, for example, in Rich Pattis' list of RISC-6000 compiler 
prices), the non-DoD part of the world will treat Ada with respect. If 
the attitude remains "soak the DoD contractors and ignore the rest of 
the world," no DoD mandate will save Ada from failure in the larger world.
This has NOTHING to do with technical issues. It has to do with business
decisions. Technically, Ada can compete, with or without type extension.
Will the Ada business ever give Ada the chance it deserves?

Mike Feldman

PS - someone characterized my last few postings as my being in a new
"attack mode." New? I sorta thought I always _was_ in attack mode...