Re: Lack of Ada programmers?

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1993Mar31.213029.1085@ennews.eas.asu.edu> dbrancat@slab.pr.erau.edu (Donald Brancato) writes:

>  I guess the thrust of my point is that the belief that there are not
>enough Ada programmers has not been researched enough to be valid.  
>A recent article in Communication of the ACM discussed a study done on
>universities currently teaching Ada as the primary language listed over
>50 universities in the U.S. alone.
>   Whether you select Ada as your language of choice is not the concern
>here.  It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate the concepts of one language
>to any other language.  In fact, after studying Ada for a couple years I
>went on to learn C, C++, and Pascal.
>
...and I'll bet that your programming in those languages is better, and
more disciplined, in those languages, as a result of your having gotten
a good education in a good language.

The ones who moan about the supposed shortage of Ada programmers always
seem to be ready to invest in 5-day crash courses, at exorbitant
prices (I know about these prices because I charge them :-)), but
were not, and still are not, ready to help their local colleges get
started and up to speed with Ada. If they had listened to what we
Ada educators were saying 5 years ago, we would not be experiencing
a shortage. But that would be asking too much of US industry. Too
long range. 5 years ago, they told me, over and over, that my freshmen
were not inteesting to them, because they would not be productive
for five years. Yep, that's true. And here we are...

Oh - have you ever run into the same managers I have? They don't
want _education_, they say. Too "academic", they say. Give us
TRAINING, they say. Sigh...

Oh - thanks for plugging my CACM paper...

Cheers -

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"The most important thing is to be sincere, 
and once you've learned how to fake that, you've got it made." 
-- old show-business adage
------------------------------------------------------------------------