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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,55ad689dc8c82d8c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre) Subject: Re: Ada policy enforcement Date: 1996/03/21 Message-ID: <4ism6v$dfr@ra.nrl.navy.mil> X-Deja-AN: 143621711 references: <31515445.28DB@lfwc.lockheed.com> organization: Naval Research Laboratory newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-03-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <31515445.28DB@lfwc.lockheed.com> Ken Garlington 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