Re: The future of Ada

[Chris Morgan <mihalis@ix.netcom.com>]

Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> writes:

>  Did not mean suggest than anyone is "cannon fodder."  On the other
>  hand, DoD contractors are not known for their generosity.  For many,
>  when you are no longer "billable" you are superfluous.  Sometimes you
>  are, indeed, regarded as "fodder."

I used to put up with it, but now I don't have to, nor do most able
programmers. 

>   
> >You seem to be saying "keep hold of staff by keeping them from having
> >a marketable skill". 
> 
>  I am saying that, training people in skills for some other marketplace
>  is a good way to encourage them to seek opportunities in that other
>  marketplace.  There is rarely a good technical reason to abandon 
>  Ada in favor of C++. Doing so does open new career opportunities for
>  the programmers.  The resulting employee turnover is inevitable. That
>  might not be a bad thing.  It will happen.  An employer must understand
>  this.  If you stay with Ada, the probability of such turnover, at least
>  from this cause, is diminished.  

Stay with Ada for good reasons by all means, but stay with it even in
part because you think it creates a programming ghetto and you can pay
your staff less than they could get elsewhere and you're just fooling
yourself - acting so dishonourably will be bad for you too in the long
run. I can apply for 100 programming jobs in one evening at
hotjobs.com and so I would hope any self-respecting programmer
realises how laughable such attempts to short change them are
becoming.

> 
> >People can see through such tactics. Even if they
> >work in 100% Ada at the office, how can you stop them developing e.g.
> >killer Perl skills at home and going to be a webmaster for a bank? You
> >can't. 
> 
>  Absolutely true.  There are some self-starters out there.  They are
>  "inner directed" and will develop new skills on their own.  Some will
>  take these new skills into the marketplace in search of new jobs. Others
>  will write some "killer app" and become entrepreneurs.  These kinds
>  of people will never be stopped - I hope. 

Self-starting is now easier than ever before. Cheap computers, free
software, the Internet. DoD contractors that act on this advice
deserve to go bust.

> 
> >You have to keep hold of staff by making them want to work at
> >your company (money, equity participation, technology, management
> >attitude, any number of factors). 
> 
>  These are certainly factors in personnel retention.  If you keep 
>  your people happy, most will want to stay with you.  But many
>  people can "resist anything except temptation."  And the temptation
>  to see whether it is possible to improve your lot with newly
>  acquired programming language skills is an on-going temptation.  
>  Employee turnover in software is not rare.

It's very rare when you pay a reasonable rate and respect your
staff. I realise that a defence focussed company cannot compete with
compensation packages in the banking world, but if it can't hold its
own against other engineering firms, it's doing something wrong, and
if pay slips so much the staff feel humiliated, it is doomed, no
matter what tricks they play with technology.

> 
> > In fact you should be able to hire C++ victims and convert them to Ada.
> 
>  I would not characterize C++ programmers as "victims."  I do understand
>  what you mean by the sentence.  It is not clear how this relates to
>  the issue of employee turnover.  

It's possible to create a high-quality software environment with good
long term prospects that would be like manna from heaven to people
who've left Ada and gone into battle with the mountains of garbage C++
code spewing out of most in-house programming shops. I don't think ACT
employees work there to get fabulously wealthy.

> 
> >I worked on a huge Ada project where some of the people got to do C++
> >and some didn't. It caused a lot of resentment because they failed to
> >make any effort to improve the lot of the Ada programmers once it
> >became clear they were paying less than the going rate for
> >programmers. 
> 
>  Exactly.  This returns to the employee turnover issue.  The going
>  rate for programmers varies all over the place.  At present, some 
>  DoD contractors and sub-contractors are below the high end of the
>  compensation rates.  Here in Silicon Valley, programmers are sometimes
>  given a salary and stock (at minimum stock options).  This is rarely
>  the case for large DoD contractors.  

In London you can hire some very good programmers for X pounds a
year. No stock options, no bonus. If you are a London based defence
company paying 0.75X at best, you're in the weeds, forget it.

> 
> >In fact the management showed some contempt for the mass
> >of us Ada programmers which were their prime asset. The benefits were
> >average, the hours long, the technology mostly backwards, yet I liked
> >it (I got to use GNAT for money). If they had simply paid anything
> >close to the market rate they could have kept hold of a lot of us, but
> >they didn't. I would have preferred to continue to work in Ada even at
> >a small salary disadvantage, but not for a 25-50% one, defence
> >projects are hard enough work as it is.
> 
>  OK.  Now, take those dissatisfied programmers and teach them a set of
>  skills that makes them even more attractive in the marketplace.  Do
>  you seriously expect them to ignore those outside opportunities.  At
>  present, DoD budgets are tight, competitive bidding demands cutting
>  salaries to the lowest margins,  and software is still not given the
>  respect we give the hardware engineering.  It is very difficult for
>  a DoD contractor to match market rates.  This is one reason why there
>  is so much emphasis on COTS software, a trend that will eventually
>  come back to haunt us.

I agree with this - the whole situation is disgusting. I'm not
insulted to hear about it, I'm insulted by the situation. The best
thing programmers can do to get some respect for their skills is to
get what the market will bear for them. If the DoD wants to pay
peanuts, they can have monkeys. If they whine about loyalty perhaps
they shouldn't have abandoned the Ada effort in the first place.

> Glad to hear the attempt at re-hire from the "company in question." 
> I too would like them to select Ada for "better reasons."  But management
> will rarely make decisions on the basis of better technology.  Such
> decisions are made for largely economic reasons.  The economics will be 
> manifested in many forms.  The reasons are often limited to the cost of
> development tools, cost of hiring, and the cost of retention.  


Actually the UK MoD still prefers Ada, and my old firm still believes
in it, but in my view they don't realise they've already bled to
death. 

> 
> The DoD gives no incentive for software productivity, no incentive for
> software reuse, no incentive for future maintainbility.  Without these
> incentives, stated in economic language, there is every incentive to 
> take a short-range view of language selection.  Choosing Ada requires
> a long-range view of the software process.  It requires enlightened
> managers.  It requires program managers who understand how Ada will
> benefit their mission.  There are some of these.  I personally know some
> of the enlightened managers.  I wish there more.

Hopefully the decision makers at the DoD will have to explain why they
are reinventing the Tower of Babel problem that they originally
identified as costing them so much money first time around. Hopefully
they will realise that the lowest sticker price is not always the best
long-term choice. Hopefully they will eventually make procurement
rules with teeth. Until then I'm staying away.

> 
> So, Chris, I understand your concern with my contention that employee
> retention is a factor in language choice.  Unfortunately, it is.  It
> would be nice if it were otherwise.

This is like saying "I recommend tax evasion to my clients, well,
there's a lot of it about". Sorry but I have to stick to my original
point, it's really terrible to hear people say that they should use
Ada to stop staff turnover. I know people who tried it and they lost
the farm and I have no sympathy with them. Any firm acting like that
should expect a more elightened, modern outfit to come in out of the
blue and eat their lunch. 

This is one of those topics where the more I write the less calm I
get, so I really apologise for any offense, but this strikes
uncomfortably close to home. I had several years of career death for
my unauthorised Ada flag waving and I'm no longer inclined to be the
eternal good guy because I love the language.

Chris
-- 
Chris Morgan <mihalis at ix.netcom.com                http://mihalis.net
 "We're going to start selling Linux to single-party users very
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