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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no 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: 1996/03/22 Message-ID: <4iurtd$9qk@ra.nrl.navy.mil>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 143781625 references: <315223f3.629346743@news.interramp.com> organization: Naval Research Laboratory newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-03-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 ------------------------- The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words. -- From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24th issue of National Review If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base. -- Dave Barry