Re: Ada in Iraq

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

Russ wrote:

> Let me follow up on my earlier post. Here is an excerpt from an email
> I recently received from a very competent and productive software
> engineer who works down the hall from me and who has great influence
> over our choice of language:
>
> Your continued obsession with Ada for purely academic reasons is a
> seemingly naive approach to real software development.  I have not
> seen any legitimate justification for switching to Ada.

I hate it when well-intentioned people from various religious
organizations knock on my door intent on saving my soul.  It
annoys me to no end when someone hawking health foods and
vitamin supplements dominates the conversation with sermons
on the virtue of  Vitamin Q5 or some such.

We all have the experience of some evangelist, who, for whatever
cause, product, or idea, intrudes upon our comfort determined
to improve us in spite of our inherent reluctance to be improved.

It is not difficult for me to imagine an exasperated programming
manager leveling the charges quoted in Russ' email.   "He convinced
against his will, is of the same opinion still."

The most successful salespeople have learned over time that their
job is over eighty percent listening.   Even when they are required
to show or tell, they are still listening.   The best sales pitch is a
conversation, not a sermon.

All too often, we (including me) become so eager to share  our
new discoveries with someone else that we let our exuberance
obscure our judgement.   This is not unique to religion, marital
aids, or hobbies.   In the programming community we encounter
born-again Javaphiles,  C++  devotees who have been exposed
to revelation from some deity of software,  the charismatic
church of the Eiffel, the serenity of Zen Ruby, and the gift of
the daughters of Zeus, Ada.

We cannot expect everyone to share in our personal epiphany, even
if it is clearly for their own good, will bring them eternal joy, or
free their blighted toenails from the unsightly discoloration that
once threatened to lead us into a life of loneliness and despair.

Those who are bullied into using Ada resent Ada.  The resentment
strikes at Ada, but it is really aimed at the bullies.   In my experience,
those who use Ada successfully, and there are lots of people who
do, persuade themselves of its benefits.   Those who are unable to
use any language well, will blame Ada.   Those who insist that Ada
be exactly like the language they just finished using elsewhere, will
never be satisfied.

If you can use Ada yourself, and produce quality software with it,
people will notice.   This happened for me many years ago when I
was consulting to a group that was using C/C++.   I wrote a little
utility program in Ada that worked really well.  "What did you
write that in?"    I replied, "Ada."    It did not persuade the entire
team to convert suddenly to Ada, but it did establish a new level
of respect for Ada that had been previously absent.

I suppose this is a lot like the advice given to aspiring fiction
writers:  "Show, don't tell."    It is the rare programmer who
will sit quietly and listen to a lecture on how great a new
programming language is.    Almost every programmer will
get excited on seeing a new piece of software that does something
in an interesting way.   And they will almost always be interested
in how that software was created.   Show.  Don't tell.

Richard Riehle