Re: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Pascal Obry wrote:
> 
> What are you doing :) ?
> 
Like I said elsewhere: I'm in a position to use Ada internally and sell 
it on projects. Some of my customers already use Ada and I try to keep 
it sold. (Increasingly difficult to get them to keep spitting into the 
wind.) Where I've got potentially new customers, I try to get Ada in 
there. In any event, I hire people who use Ada on a daily basis so I 
think I'm doing *my* part for the cause. ;-)

> 
> That's not so easy. I've seen lot of project managers chosing C++ even if
> they knew that Ada was cheaper/safer. As I said that's not so easy... This is
> political, choising a technology that everybody uses can't be something that
> we'll be reproached to you if the project is not on schedule/budget!
> 
> I think we have already debated about this, nothing have changed and it is
> still very very hard (impossible?) to win this battle :(
> 

The mistake here is to keep trying to sell to the people who keep saying 
"No!" They don't want it. They're not interested in it. They're not 
going to buy it. Move on.

I'd contend that they're not just a batch of idiots and that there are 
often compelling reasons why they go down the path they choose. But if I 
concede the point and (for the sake of argument) agree that they're all 
a bunch of idiots with no vision, then what's the answer from there? 
Quit trying to convince them and do an end-run around them!

Perhaps we're not big enough to become the prime contractor on some 
sophisticated airborne radar or whatever is being done by LockMart, et 
al. But that doesn't mean that there aren't potential projects that have 
some significant software in them wherein Ada would have a technical 
advantage. So long as everyone keeps thinking like a defense contractor 
("I've got to wait until the government specifies Ada in a project...") 
it is *NEVER* going to happen. As soon as some Ada advocates start 
thinking like entrepreneurs ("I've got an idea for some end-product that 
would be superior and would cost less to do in Ada...") then we stand a 
chance.

Let's quit crying over the fact that LockMart, Boeing, et al, don't want 
to use Ada and go figure out who *does* want to use it. (Hint: That 
would be us.) If those guys (us) go off and build some end product of 
some sort and successfully sell it, sooner or later it starts spilling 
over into the LockMart/Boeing/etc. world.

MDC


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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm

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