Ada survival without daddy Lord Byron (was leg. mandate)

[g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu]

In article <1990Dec20.015945.24282@ico.isc.com>, rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> 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...
> 
NO!  This sets academic freedom back 200 years!  :-)

anyway...

> I think that it's high time Ada was cut
> loose from its life-support system of government-mandated ramming-down-
> our-throats and allowed to live or die.  I'm serious.  If Ada can't sur-
> vive on its own, it's not viable.  (For the record, although I'm not much
> of an Ada fan, I do think Ada *can* survive.  It won't be the top
> language, but it has its place(s).)
> 
> In fact, I think that some of the mandated use of Ada has damaged its
> growth.  People look at it and say "oh, that's only for government work,
> and it's all tied up in bureaucracy...we don't want it."
> 

I am NOT sure Ada could survive on its own to satisfy the
language-proliferation [once] problems experienced by DoD; I also believe that
the attitude toward it would kill it almost immediately.  The press has been
full of negative comments.

[I DO hope that I am wrong!]

I have been actively programming in it for six years, but it does have some 
real faults (which I will not get into here.).  Languages like Pascal and C
have them too, but there are also many pre-conceived notions about the language
that would kill it immediately:  "Too Big," "Too hard to learn."
"Government-only languge," "Seriously flawed," "Too expensive," "Too slow,"
etc. etc.  

The non-DoD Ada efforts in this country and especially in Europe are very
interesting, and I would like to hear some of the stories (successes and
failures) about working with Ada in a non-educational and non-mandated
environment.  

> -- 
> Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
>    ...Mr. Natural says, "Use the right tool for the job."

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