Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

["Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

Tom Robinson <robinson@GDESYSTEMS.COM> writes:
>And, *I thought*, that the DOD was required to use validated compilers.  But
>I could be wrong on that.  But *if it does*, then in order to sell to the DOD
>companies would need to be on the validation list.  Since the list is extremely
>small when compared to Ada 83 I use it as the measure of how far along the
>Ada 95 market is today.  One measure of how successful Ada 95 is will be how
>fast that list grows in the next 12 months as the gnat and AdaMagic based
>compilers start hitting the market.
>
    So far as I know, that requirement of using a validated compiler
    is still there. It's a shame that all the positive aspects of Ada
    83 and Ada 95 haven't managed to persuade more people to use the
    language and there still seems to be a need to "mandate" its use.

    I believe that the biggest problems have been marketing and
    perception. It may not be too late to correct some of the
    perceptions, but it will take lots of effort.

    I'd suggest that those of us who produce applications in Ada start
    putting advertising hype into our applications. What if every time
    someone started that clever app of yours a screen popped up with
    not only the copywrite notice, etc. but in bold letters with lots
    of slick graphics, something to the effect of:

        This application written in Ada95: "When you care enough to
            write the very best."

    or

        This application written in Ada95: "Good to the last drop."

    or

        This application written in Ada95: "Mess with the best, die
            like the rest!"

    Whatever. You get the picture. If every time you ran an extremely
    reliable application and you noticed it was implemented in Ada95,
    you might start getting the message. (Anyone care to start a
    contest for the best "Ada95 Inside" slogan? e-mail your entries to
    me and I'll consolidate them and rebroadcast.)

    I know I have little trouble spotting the C/C++ based apps -
    they're the ones that die with mysterious segmentation violations
    or memory access errors because of abused pointers or array
    accesses that aren't range limited.

    Wouldn't quality products clearly advertising their implementation
    do a lot to persuade people that Ada is a "real" language capable
    of "serious" development and thus be worthy of consideration?

    Pax,
    Marin

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        407.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
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