Re: Modernizing Ada

[billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )]

From article <20600009@inmet>, by stt@inmet:
> Here is the wording from the Ada9x project plan:
>  A revision requirement that does not meet the "upward compatibility"
>  criteria will only be considered if it affects a very large
>  portion of the Ada community and its absence in the
>  revised standard has a serious negative impact on application development.

  Multiple inheritance, for example, meets both criteria and therefore 
  should be considered regardless of whether or not upward compatibility 
  is affected.  Every effort must be made to minimize the difficulty of 
  the transition, but not at the expense of capabilities which are vital 
  to the modernization of our software engineering technology. 

  Saving money on software development is the fundamental motivation
  behind software engineering, and the fundamental motivation behind
  Ada itself.  If a situation arises in which commercial organizations
  can use a language which is up-to-date and thereby produce Government
  software systems at a lower cost than can be achieved by those using
  a hypothetical 9X which failed to track advancements in software 
  engineering technology, then Ada will have FAILED in its mission.

  The consequence of this would be that the entire Ada organization 
  would be scrapped.  Critics of government would gleefully claim that
  Ada was yet another example of how anything the government touches
  becomes inefficient, obsolescent, and doomed to failure.  

  Are they right? 


  Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu