Re: Ada policy enforcement

[pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre)]

In article <4iir4c$koa$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com> N. L. Sizemore  
<102673.224@CompuServe.COM> writes:
> 	As a (non-C) programmer looking for work in a C/C++ 
> dominated and largely DOD oriented programming community, and as 
> a former soldier, a question has occurred to me which those with 
> closer ties to the DOD plocy community might be able to answer.
> 
> Qualification:  I realize that large organizations make policy 
> mistakes, and dedicated and energetic middle mamangers often try 
> to correct them at a working level.  I also realize that a 'do it 
> my way or else' attitude can be anathema to a group of technical 
> professionals.  Nonetheless, we work in an arena where DOD has 
> undertaken extensive and widely publicised efforts to 'do the 
> right thing'.  Moreover, the Ada policy is now, and has been for 
> some time, both public law and DOD and service regulation.
> 
> The question:  Given the legal status of the Ada mandate as both 
> public law and regulation, why has DOD not only been lax in 
> enforcement, but allowed wodespread use of a language not even on 
> the list of DOD approved alternate languages?
> 
> Technical and programmatic issues aside it appears poor 
> leadership to allow senior personnel to flout law and regulation 
> with impunity.  While I have seen this issue discussed here I 
> have not seen an answer to the question
> 
> 			N. L. Sizemore

I don't really know whats going on but DOD seems to be sitting back as though
the problem that they perceived initially is now solved and that all they have 
to do is mandate the use of Ada in government contracts. People working for 
govenment contractors  have had quite a bit to say about this in this group.
Maybe DOD should pick one person from each of the contracting companies that 
has done work on Ada mandated projects, pay them to make a joint report, then
use the report as a basis to go to stage 2. Its going to cost more to fix the  
problem than they thought; no surprise. I don't believe that the problem will 
go  away without something like Ada. On the other hand, no one seems to believe  
that the avialablity of Ada  and contract specifications alone are going to  
tame the beast. Some might say that the beast has going from belching and  
farting out loud to breathing fire. 

It sounds like maybe DOD inadvertently tried to make private companies  eat
cost of education, conversion and interfacing.
Maybe a better approach to "enforcing Ada" would be for DOD to say what their 
verifiable performance specs are and then tell people how much extra they will
pay if they do it partially in Ada and how much more for doing it all in Ada. 
I'm sure that this would have all sorts of problems too but the point is that
there needs to be a way of covering the cost of conversion that accounts for 
real world contracting and bussiness practices. Maybe the cost looks to big?
If so then DOD has to think about it from the perspective of what the  
cost/benefit looks like 20 to 50 years from now. We don't want it to read like 
"oh shit we almost thought about it enough".

richard
(my opinons only)