Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada?

[Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org>]

Michael Card wrote:
> The only rationale I can come up with to explain the Dod's anti-Ada bias 
> is that some high-up folks in the Pentagon didn't like it, maybe because 
> it was from DISA (I get the feeling DISA is one of the lesser-loved 
> branches of the DoD). This distaste for Ada by the services themselves 
> (USN, USA, USMC, USAF) would certainly be quickly mirrored by the 
> contractors, since the services are the ones paying them, not DISA. So, 

Probably partly right.  My experience, however, leads me to suspect
that part of the problem is some officer who has no clue what 
programming really is, much less software engineering, but he has
been playing with a PC at home for years.  He has managed to do a
few trivial but "COOL" programs at home with C++ or Java and that
plus the popular press has convinced him that Java and C++ are
where it's at.  Then he gets transferred to an acquisition job, ....

I am aware of a situation where a Java hacker working for a
defense contractor had a prototype GUI with practically no
functionality implemented.  Some military officer saw it and
asked how soon it could be delivered.  A few months later,
thousands of lines of Java were given a pretend peer review, ....

-- 
Wes Groleau

Truth often suffers more from the heat of its defenders
than from the arguments of its opposers.
                        -- William Penn