Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada

[g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu]

In article <EMERY.90Dec17153931@aries.linus.mitre.org>, emery@linus.mitre.org (David Emery) writes:
>>From: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
>>I sat in a meeting where an individual (working in one of the military
>>service DoD secretariets) insisted that any university that got
>>federal money (ROTC, research grants, etc.) should be told to teach
>>Ada or have their money taken away.
> 
> Actually, I think there's something to be said for this idea.  Even
> more, I think that any DARPA or DoD-funded project should submit a
> waiver request to do their work in something besides Ada.  Such
> waivers should be reasonably easy to get, but there are a lot of
> research projects that could be used on gov't systems, except for the
> fact that they're implemented in languages that create a significant
> maintenance/adaptability problem (e.g. C, lisp).  
> 

(The next thing we'll have is the government trying to tell us that we must
teach the metric system.  ;-)  I disagree with the above statement.  It's one
thing mandating equal opportunity; it another trying to FORCE what we teach. 

There is still such a thing as academic freedom.  

Although I am the FIRST to propose using Ada as the primary procedural 
language in the classroom, I will not be forced to even offer one course in 
the language and its applications by the DoD.  We do offer such a course and 
another course in specific Ada-like applications, but it was our choice to do 
this!

> However, unless and until Ada compilers are as affordable as C
> compilers (e.g. Gnu C), such a requirement will be financially
> untenable, since most schools are unwilling to fork out the $$ for an
> Ada compiler.

I disagree again.  Although Ada is not "free," there are relatively inexpensive
compilers for PC's, and with educational discounts you can purchase a
mini/mainframe compiler for about the same price as any other. 


George....

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