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From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Subject: Off the record, Pentagon "admits" its apathy to Ada
Message-ID: <D047DF.M3E@world.std.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 04:34:27 GMT
Date: 1994-12-01T04:34:27+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

   One of the problems of suppressing dissent over Ada policy and management
is that reality tends to be put aside for genuflecting.  Has the majority of
the DoD rejected Ada?  Officially no, unofficially probably yes, especially
since the DoD has consistently refused to measure programming language use
inside the DoD.

   Consider then the following article that appeared in the October 21 issue
of the "Inside the Air Force" newsletter, page 7 (Ada pablum left out, "^^^"
are mine):

	"The DoD's choice of Ada for use in weapon system programs
	has caught on very slowly among the services, despite initial
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^
	hopes that Ada would reduce costs and smooth complications
	in software maintenance throughout the DoD, Pentagon officials
	and industry observers are saying.  It is hoped, however, that
	Ada9X, could make Ada more competitive and more commonly used
	across DoD and the services, one DoD official said.

	Contributing to the sluggishness with which Ada has been adopted
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^
	by DoD is a relative lack of software developers who are well
	versed in the primarily military-oriented language.  Ada is a
	"very experience demanding language", for which there is a steep
	learning curve, a fact that has not enticed a large pool of
	programmers to learn what is considered a quite specialized
	skill.  "Not many people speak Ada", said one source.
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

	The use of Ada has "never really [been] institutionalized" by
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	DoD, which had intended Ada to be a common software language
	for its weapon systems programs, according to a source.  A
	complicating factor has been that it is not very cost-effective
	to update programs written in other languages to Ada, according
	to the DoD official.  "We are still maintaining older programs
	in legacy code", the official said.

	The programming difficulties associated with Ada were intended
	to be offset by the benefits of improved maintainability and
	reusability of Ada software, according to one observer. However,
	in an environment of declining budgets with relatively few new
	weapons programs, there is not much increase in potential users
	for Ada, a DoD source said.

I would like to know who these DoD officials are, and why their comments
have to be made anonymously.  I thought we were living in the new era of
"Ada openness" kicked off at the Ada Summit.  Because between the lines,
their comments imply that the majority of the DoD, fifteen years into Ada,
isn't using Ada.

It might help if these DoD officials also point out that it doesn't aid DoD
efforts to use Ada when you have Air Force efforts like KBSA, the non-Ada AI
CASE effort that everyone refuses to examine in light of the Ada Mandate, or
when the DoD service research agencies fund mostly non-Ada efforts.  How do
you expect people to learn the "difficult" Ada language if you are paying them
to program something else?

But I suppose if I am too stupid to analyze the raw data of the AJPO survey,
I am too stupid to analyze anything else.

Greg Aharonian