Re: Fantastic Ada promotional piece from Rational (long)

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

In article <rodc.779845282@hawk>, Rod Cheshire <rodc@adied.oz.au> wrote:

>As _ENGINEERS_ why don't we use the best tool for the job instead of
>sticking blindly to the one we like the best?

Well, one of the problems is that there really are few objective
measures of "best tool for the job" in software development. So
we are reduced to religious-type persuasion. As a 20-year CS
professor, I came to the conviction long ago that our best hope
is to educate our students to be discerning, by exposing them to
a fair number of languages, tools, systems, etc., working through
some comparisons - trying to keep them as factual as possible -
and adminishing them that the world they will inhabit is constantly
changing, so today's great fads will be tomorrow's "old hat."

>Or is Software Engineering now becoming a religion where faith and hope
>reign?

Well, to a certain extent it always has been "religious." I think there
are several reasons:

(1) it's a new discipline (relative to traditional science and
    engineering); indeed, there is not even a universally-accepted
    definition of what is _is_. Even the very definitions are religious.

(2) it has become very crowded with people very rapidly, so just keeping
    in touch with others in the field is tremendously difficult;

(3) it is very product-oriented, mostly because we are still not sure how 
    to divorce it from products (I include languages as "products").
    We are therefore vulnerable to the best and worst kinds of
    salesmanship.

(4) The field is predominantly male, and (as my wife points out),
    the urge to persuade others that your favorite thing is
    bigger, better, faster than others', is much more a "guy thing"
    than a "girl thing."  How many female names do you see in the
    flame wars on the net? My wife says it's because the women have
    better things to do with their time than engage in endless
    pi**ing contests.

I believe it is this last factor that causes us to measure success mainly 
in terms of market share.

Naturally, all this is also a matter of opinion. :-)

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER.
"Pork is all that stuff the government gives the other guys."
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