Re: Ada policy enforcement

[pp000166@interramp.com (Robert Munck)]

On 21 Mar 1996 22:45:51 GMT, pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre)
wrote:
>If Ada were *manifestly* better then there would be no need to enforce it.
>Enforcment is the last refuge of the terminaly confused 

One more time:

1.  The largest costs of DoD software come in maintenance and
upgrades.

2. Ada is harder than other languages for some programmers,
easier for others; the differences are not huge.  However, Ada
programmers are generally somewhat more expensive.

3. In any significant system, the people responsible for
implementation costs are NEVER the same people as those
responsible for maintenance costs.  No DoD program officer,
civilian employee, or contractor has ever suffered the slightest
negative effect to career or reputation because the system they
implemented turned out to be an expensive nightmare to
maintain.

In other words, the people who see that Ada is *manifestly*
better are not the ones who decide whether or not to use it.
You need ENFORCEMENT from a higher authority.  Of course,
all of the current higher authorities will be long gone when 
today's decisions have negative results.  Those few who fight
for Ada are demonstrating altruism, a contra-survival trait for
a bureaucrat.

I just noticed your NRL.Navy.mil address.  WHY DON'T YOU
KNOW THIS??? The Navy has horrendous current maintenance
costs, because of all of those programs in AN/UYK-20 assembler,
the variants of CMS-2, FORTRAN, ECOS, and SPL-1 and the long,
long time between refits of ships at sea.

Bob Munck@acm.org