From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,325c54deb91283fd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-26 09:17:46 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail From: Richard Riehle Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada in Iraq Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 09:18:29 -0700 Organization: AdaWorks Software Engineering Message-ID: <3EAAB155.E4F55148@adaworks.com> References: Reply-To: richard@adaworks.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 3f.bb.a1.a5 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Server-Date: 26 Apr 2003 16:17:45 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:36610 Date: 2003-04-26T16:17:45+00:00 List-Id: 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