Re: Ada policy enforcement

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

In article <31515445.28DB@lfwc.lockheed.com> Ken Garlington  
<garlingtonke@lfwc.lockheed.com> writes:
> N. L. Sizemore wrote:
> > 
> > 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?
> 
> I can't answer the core of your question (and agree it's a good question),
> but I can pass on one item: There are apparently conflicting legal
> opinions as to whether the Congressional part of the mandate expired with
> the appropriations act to which it was attached. So, it's a matter of
> opinion as to whether Ada is still public law.
> 
> As for regulation, there is also some ambiguity about the extent of
> the Ada mandate, given the revised wording of DoDI 500.2. Hopefully,
> this ambiguity will be better explained with the release of some of
> the follow-on regulations (which will be out Real Soon Now).

If Ada were *manifestly* better then there would be no need to enforce it.
Enforcment is the last refuge of the terminaly confused and soon to be
extinct. (Contract specification is a different matter, and yes you
can spank me for the unattributed misquote.)  
 

I would assume that the original designers of Ada were acting 
based on rational consideration of positive *real world* experiences with 
languages of similar ilk.  Perhaps experienced Ada programmers confuse or 
forget the distinction between their positive programming experience 
with Ada and  their intellectual appreciation of it. Perhaps this 
results in debates like the ones that occur here. 

Here, people with actual Ada experience attempt to convey their
intellectual appreciation of and rewarding experiences with Ada. This 
systematically instigates a defensive response which is usually, in some
sense, logically correct but effectively irrelevant or it is intellectual
excrement and misdirection based primarily on a need to rationalize 
emotional attachments and large personal investments. The worst responses 
are from professional programmers of presumably vast experience
who give intellectual obeisance with 
a side order of denigration. Read some of this shit carefully and think about 
your future with automated equipment in general and transportation systems 
in particular. Count the times you see something like "all this
compiler checking  stuff is nice but in the *real world* ..."
If you are one of the  people who really really 
believe that kind of stuff, then please go away.  
You are in the wrong place. If you are a professional programmer then
I hope you write nice database applications with your favorite 
tools. That way I can sleep secure in the knowledge that all 
references to me and my kin  will  eventually be 
irretreivably and mercifully lost from your company's systems. 
The net effect of these great language debates is 
affirmation of satisfying but dangerous and illfounded beliefs.

Almost any programmer with a little experience  understands the important
issues underlying the design of Ada. You get your candle burned from
a few ends a few times and all of a sudden some previously insipid
text book chapters become gospel. Of course, this elightenment
doesn't automatically come wrapped in the
conviction that Ada does in fact address those issues better than something
else? It isn't fundamentally an intellectual issue.
Without a direct experience it is difficult for people to apprecitate
the ergonomic motivation for the intellectual circus surrounding good
tools.

It is true that real educational experiences are very expensive from many 
perspectives. Perhaps those who first considered the need for Ada did not
correctly assess the cost of a complete solution to the problems that Ada 
attempts to address. The federal government should learn from the DoD
experience and establish standards and certification mechanisms in areas
of software development affecting public safety. 
No direct enforcement, just support for real education, 
standards of performance, and certification. 

richard