From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.5 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_05,FROM_ADDR_WS autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 8 Jun 93 04:03:13 GMT From: europa.eng.gtefsd.com!darwin.sura.net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@gatech.edu ( Michael Feldman) Subject: Re: How to Make Ada more widely used? Message-ID: <1993Jun8.040313.1135@seas.gwu.edu> List-Id: In article srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes: > >Of course, thanks to the Mandate, there are virtually no Ada support >libraries for most applications domains, while despite the problems >of C, there are hundreds of commercial and thousands of public domain >support libraries in C. Thus for a few things, Ada programmers do >quite well, while for most other applications, Ada programmers can't >do anything at all. The Mandate has allow the destruction of a >commercial Ada business, which despite DoD denials, hurts DoD >software development and drives up costs. > Hogwash. DoD did not force the Ada vendors to take, for ten years, their characteristic myopic approach to business. For all that I think the (congressional) mandate was a mistake, I nevertheless pin the sorry state of the Ada industry squarely where IMHO it belongs: on a bunch of companies that had the chance to act like Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, developing a government and a commercial market in parallel, as so many companies have done. Alas, they didn't act like Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They acted like Beltway Bandits, jumping on to what they thought was an infinitely long DoD gravy train, blowing off other market sectors and the universities, until the declining post-Cold War defense situation shook them out of their awful complacency. I do NOT believe that DoD asked them to be, or intended that they be, captive DoD contractors. They did it themselves. Don't blame their shortsightednes and lousy management on the mandate. It surely _allowed_ these companies to become as they are, but nobody _forced_ them to. They blew it, Greg, all by their lonesomes. Mike ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-5296 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet) ------------------------------------------------------------------------