Re: An observation of Ada (may offend)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <3kiani$i49@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Isn't the channel tunnel signalling system in Ada? That certainly is not
>a government project (the government holds an equity stake, but so do lots
>of other people, in the private company that is digging and running the
>thing!)

Well put, Robert. Sometimes it's hard for U.S. folks to understand that 
the relationships between government and industry are much different in
Europe than here. The Chunnel project is a good example of the interweaving
of governments, private concerns, and sometimes multilateral government
groups, such as the Safety Commission for the Chunnel, whose mission
is _just_ to oversee safety concerns. If I recall correctly, that 
commission is a creature of the British and French governments.

It's hard for Americans to follow that many companies in Europe have
mixed government/private stockholders. In some cases, the government
is the dominant (or only) stockholder, in others there is lots of
private participation as well.

In my experience, Europeans seem more resigned to the idea that
government is involved in their businesses and their lives; I
observe that they tend to deride government, _per se_, much less 
than we do. 

I've often thought that part of the resistance in the U.S. to Ada,
because of its DoD connections, has less to do with political
correctness ("I won't touch anything the bomb-builders use") than
with traditional American disdain for government, and especially the
Feds ("If the government did it, it couldn't possibly be any good.").

How do European readers of CLA react to this? 

[snip]

>There are certainly many examples of non-govt related Ada projects (Boeing
>commercial is an obvious example). Earlier this week, I was at a meeting
>at Praxis, who makes a tool, SPARC Examiner, used in the creation of
>high integrity Ada code. They reported that more than half their customers
>are commercial customers.

Naturally it would be nice to know who these customers are.:-)

People (perhaps Fred is one) who will seek out _any_ reason to argue that
Ada is unsuccessful, will usually find lots of reasons, if they engage
in the kind of speculation Fred did ("only governments use Ada").

I persist in my foggy-headed notion that market share is not the only
measure of success. Ada is succeeding in the areas in which it was
designed to succeed. Sure, I'd love it if all the PC developers were
using Ada, but that is an unrealistic expectation (at last for now),
and is, in an important way, irrelevant.

Mike Feldman