Re: How many different processors do you use?

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <7jmr4i$1c1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  muddy_buddy@my-deja.com wrote:
> Perhaps the offical process was, but there were C compliers
> out before the sign off.  Its that true of Ada 95?

Yes, of course! You really should know a bit more about what
is going on before making your pronouncements!

> I guess my dislike of Reagen may have made me assume it was
> his fault that the government didn't support the obvious
> method of getting Ada accepted.

I am afraid your idea that Reagen (sic) took a personal interest
in how Ada was funded is a bit far-fetched :-)

> However, there were government people pointing that out
> as a reason in the 80's.

No idea what you are talking about here! I trust you do know
that now there *is* a freely available high quality compiler
for Ada 95, part of the GNU system.

> The goal of the Ada project was to standardize defense
> deptmart software on Ada.

Actually the real goal was to diminish the great variety of
miscellaneous programming languages being used in the DoD, and
that goal has been quite successfull.

> Since there are many defense
> contractors rapidily retreating from Ada support over ten
> years past the deadlines I don't see how the orginal effort
> can be considered anything but a failure.

Odd, how come if so many people are retreating, then our Ada
business is rapidly growing, and other vendors have also
reported a successful marketplace for Ada. The fact is that
many large defense contractors continue with a strong commitment
to Ada for the kind of projects where it has always been the
most successful. The fact that your company has rapidly
retreated seems to be coloring your view, I suspect that you
are simply guessing based on no good data here.

> Your 10K figure is a bogus one picked out of the air. Many
> universities had Ada, none I know paid anywhere near 10K.

> The 10k number as the price I remember for the development
> system we got.

You do quite a lot of bogus extrapolation from your own limited
experience it would seem. Just because you paid 10K, you assume
that everyone else did -- rather absurd if you think about it,
and certainly quite wrong.

> > Sounds like quite a bit of mismanagement there to me!
>
> Agreed, but the government's mismanagement of the Ada effort
> was the whole point of my orginal post, not any attack on the
> Ada language.  I wish they had done a better job.

No, I was meaning that it sounded like your company mismanaged
its Ada involvement from the sound of it.

> See above, the Ada language itself was a minor problem.  The
> way the government supported it was cause of the lack of
> acceptance.  The same government agency also tried to get us
> to do Ada Peudo code for PLD's.  I not positive our own
> managament wasn't at fault for some of this

That's what it sounds like to me!

> but the Government's Ada effort must of made them think thats
> what the customer wanted.

Don't be too quick to blame nameless government folks

> Admittely we have a lot of problem finding any programmers to
> work here,

So, that's odd, why could that be? Note that this difficulty
is nothing to do with Ada, as I understand what you are saying.
So if you have difficulty elsewhere, it is more evidence that
things are not being managed as they should be.

> but adding Ada to the requirements just makes
> it worst.  When you have a defense contractor in a hot
> engineering market, retension
> becomes a real problem.

Not for a well run company!

I know many defence contractors (and other large goverment
and commercial developers) who maintain large Ada programmers
with good people and retain these good people.

An amazing amount depends on how a company is managed. As I
said, Ada is not a magic anti-dote to bad management


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