Re: Ichbiah's letter to Anderson: Here it is

[bu.edu!inmet!dsd!ryer@purdue.edu (Mike Ryer)]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Apr29102415@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:

>
>           IF ADA IS AS COST-EFFECTIVE AS ITS PROPONENTS PROCLAIM,
>           THE MANDATE WOULD BE IRRELEVANT, SINCE FOR EVERY BIDDED
>           PROJECT, THE ADA BIDS WOULD ALWAYS BE LOWER.


NOT!

Languages are chosen at the beginning of the life cycle, based on RFPs for 
Development and/or Production.  These RFPs never include life-cycle 
maintenance, enhancements, and support of the software.  That is a separate
RFP.  Both DOD and its contractors have incentives to make decisions based
on *development* costs rather than total costs.  As long as these incentives
(profits and promotions) are not changed, some other mechanism is needed to
ensure that the ultimate maintenance and supportability of the software gets
considered in the language decision.  That is the purpose of the mandate.
Have you got a better approach?

Particularly given the DOD's tendency to have software maintenance done
by "seven dollar engineers" under labor-ordering contracts, the real cost
of using an undisciplined language (or set of languages) in development
is immense.

Mike Ryer