Re: Advice on selling Ada to a C shop

[George Orwell <nobody@mixmaster.it>]

> So, I think the proper approach is to debunk their irrational fears of
> Ada and expose the real cost of bugs in the C software, which they have
> been ignoring up to now.  Show them that no, C is not "good enough".

I'm going to continue to play the devil's advocate only because I was
recently involved in a debacle along these lines.

Whatever they have is good enough. There are very few companies today, even
software companies, that have not decided bugs, even serious bugs, are just
a fact of life. They accept they're going to anger or even lose some
percent of customers, but this is factored in to their financial
plans. Quality no longer matters, what matters is how much money we can
soak you for this quarter and how long we can get away with it. Good enough
is good enough, and being the best or putting out a product with no known
bugs that can't be circumvented is no longer on radar.

A lot of this has come from the poor quality of PC software (Windows) which
filtered up even to large platforms. Companies that years ago hired the
best people and wanted to put out the best products are now run by myopic
managers who think salesmen are the actual product, not software. They just
sell all they can, and if something goes wrong at a customer site they try
to fix it, but oh well if we caused you a problem that's life. All the big
companies are moving to offshore "talent" (cheap) and all the real talent
is dying by attrition. And if you don't like what we have, it doesn't
really matter, because believe us, we checked, and the whole industry is
moving towards a calculated lowest common denominator of quality- as little
as possible and still stay in business- until we can find our next job. Our
code sucks, but so does theirs...but guess what? We can give you the best
terms on the shit we're peddling. 90 day net to qualified buyers... 

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