Re: Ada not wanted

[mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner)]

    > ... recruiter ... cannot find qualified Ada candidates ...

    > ... any of you come across this situation?

No. The situation that is most common is offering entry-level salaries
for positions requiring Ada and senior systems engineering experience.

Very few Ada users are doing simple databases like financial applications
or gui generation using automatic gui-generating tools or web pages.

Most Ada users are doing hardware-software integration, realtime systems,
transportation or communications systems, engines or pilot or radar
stations, satellite orbital or ground stations, complex tools, 
military applications, or some form of robotics. 

To ask an entry level programmer, like my nephew, at entry level 
wages, to simply program the orbit of a satellite or make my engine
timing start working, is not necessarily a good plan. 

To expect people to quit their job for entry-level wages is also not
necessarily a good plan. 

The real problem is that the people who have the ability to solve
the problems are not being sought because the seekers have no
intention of paying what they are worth. 

The other half of the problem is that any object Pascal or Turbo Pascal
with objects programmer can be turned into an Ada programmer in a couple 
of hours. A very quick interview can determine if they have ever used
Pascal objects as objects, or actually divided programs into 
interfaces and implementations, and actually encapsulated data.

Again, this points to the fact that Ada is not the problem. The problem
is solving particular types of problems. Ada just happens to be the
best way to solve those problems. 

Entry level salaries does NOT happen to be best way to solve those 
problems.

There are enough Ada programmers to go around, but there are not
enough jobs at their salary levels. 

Mike Brenner