Re: Ada policy enforcement

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

In article <315223f3.629346743@news.interramp.com> pp000166@interramp.com  
(Robert Munck) writes:
> On 21 Mar 1996 22:45:51 GMT, pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre)
> wrote:
> >If Ada were *manifestly* better then there would be no need to enforce it.
> >Enforcment is the last refuge of the terminaly confused 
> 
> One more time:
> 
> 1.  The largest costs of DoD software come in maintenance and
> upgrades.
> 
> 2. Ada is harder than other languages for some programmers,
> easier for others; the differences are not huge.  However, Ada
> programmers are generally somewhat more expensive.
> 
> 3. In any significant system, the people responsible for
> implementation costs are NEVER the same people as those
> responsible for maintenance costs.  No DoD program officer,
> civilian employee, or contractor has ever suffered the slightest
> negative effect to career or reputation because the system they
> implemented turned out to be an expensive nightmare to
> maintain.
> 
> In other words, the people who see that Ada is *manifestly*
> better are not the ones who decide whether or not to use it.
> You need ENFORCEMENT from a higher authority.  Of course,
> all of the current higher authorities will be long gone when 
> today's decisions have negative results.  Those few who fight
> for Ada are demonstrating altruism, a contra-survival trait for
> a bureaucrat.
> 
> I just noticed your NRL.Navy.mil address.  WHY DON'T YOU
> KNOW THIS??? The Navy has horrendous current maintenance
> costs, because of all of those programs in AN/UYK-20 assembler,
> the variants of CMS-2, FORTRAN, ECOS, and SPL-1 and the long,
> long time between refits of ships at sea.
> 
> Bob Munck@acm.org

I reassert that enforcement won't work, at least not in the long term.
I believe that if DoD started really enforcing *the law* then
DoD would be beaten into an understanding of the social and 
economic realities of what it wants. DoD would get an education in
higher law and authority. Real enforcement comes from the bottom up. 
If contractors cannot afford to use Ada and/or DoD can not be made to
appreciate the real cost of software that meets their requirements 
then enforcement  pushes contractors into passive 
agressive and competitive creative misrepresentational(pure marketing) 
modes.

It is perhaps a common belief  that within the government bureaucracy
real costs somehow never matter and no one is ever accountable. 
Private or public, people that matter take responsibility. No one has to do
that and when no one does then you get nothing. In the private sector
the problem is dealt with via marketing. The difference between being 
cynical and being realistic is in the commitment to use and change the real
situation for the better. Realistic people do make a choice about
what they want to achieve, they consciously and deliberatly assume
responsibility for their situation and their accomplishments and they
take risks. They live with their mistakes. They do exist.
Their early demise  is an endless source of comfort to those who  
strive for complete security.
  

DoD had the forsight and understanding to develope Ada. Maybe they
can get the understanding that they need to finish the job.
DoD needs a useable realization of the cost factors that they 
did not originally anticipate or grossly underestimated.

Its not hard for me to imagine Ada dying as a viable tool.
Bad things like that happen over and over again and the things 
left in their stead are often seriously defective.


 :-)O<

richard
 my opinons only
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