Ada as a Successor to COBOL

[CONTR47@NOSC-TECR.ARPA]

Let me say all I know about this subject (this wouldn't take long).
1. I was contacted by several large DoD COBOL shops near Wash DC
regarding Ada training so I visited one of them one day. I learned
that their General had directed that Ada be used in place of COBOL
and naturally the subject of Ada training came up. I was told that
many of the "COBOL Programmers" performed maintenance only and had
never written an original program. After grasping the enormity
of the problem I can understand this. I have fixed many cars
bt have never built one. It seemed to me that they need an
Ada system which included CICS and probably many other things
that I don't understand.
2. I stated that I could teach Ada but could not begin to teach them
how to apply it to their system problem and also I suspected
that huge pieces (e.g.:CICS) were missing from the Ada system.
They said that Alsys was conducting an experimental course
to learn how much Ada could be taught to the COBOL people. I
don't know how this turned out.
3. I determined that I could teach the people generics, tasking
abstraction etc. given enough time. I suspected that I might have to
preceed the Ada course with one semester of Computer Science.
I decided to stick to my realtime Ada knitting and leave the
COBOL to Ada transition to those who understand the
system problem. It is my impression that Dr. Robert Dewar
of NYU is an expert in both COBOL and Ada and
could probably provide language guidance. However in addition
system knowledge is needed (he may have that also).
4. A friend of mine taught 2 weeks of Ada to COBOL people at 
a military base and at the end of 2 weeks they didn't
 yet understand the difference between an object and
a type. I'm not putting anyone down, just pointing out that
pre-Ada training may be necessary.
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To develop a successful product, system etc:
step 1 - Understand the Customers Problem
--
regards, sam harbaugh
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