Superconducting Ada compilers ?

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

      Superconducting Ada compilers?  Sounds like a dumb way for the DoD to
invest its money, which fortunately the DoD isn't doing.  But just as dumb is
the following announcement:

	"Superconductor Technologies (Santa Barbara, CA) has been
	granted a $1.9 million contract from the Naval Research
	Laboratory to develop and evaluate cyro-cooled SPARC
	workstations.  Superconductor Technologies will work with
	Sun Microsystems, Ross Technologies and nCHIP to develop
	the workstation".

Can't the DoD find a better way to invest taxpayer's dollars?  The workstation
industry is highly competitive with billions of dollar of private investment
already exploring many ways to improve workstations for both public and
government use.  If this idea (super-cooled workstations) makes any economic
sense, I am sure one or more of the companies (especially some of the Japanese
companies, which have access to government funds for applied cyrogenics) would
do so, and the DoD wouldn't have to waste precious bodily fluids (i.e. money).

Instead, the DoD could take the $1.9 million dollars and have one of their
contractors find out the most important bit of information that affects the
$20 billion DoD software development budget (or they could give me $190,000):

		WHAT PERCENT OF THE DOD IS USING ADA ???????

Fifteen years into Ada, hundreds of millions spent on Ada policy management
and research projects, estimates of over 50% of the DoD not using Ada, and
no one in this country in and out of the military knows this figure.  With
this figure, and the project set up to calculate it, which can be used to
track this figure in each succeeding year with little effort, the DoD would
have a very powerful tool to determine how (in)effective its Ada policies are.
Measuring such fundamental numbers is at the heart of scientific analysis of
the type that Edmonds keeps on talking about.

But noooooooo, the DoD would rather develop a superconducting workstation,
probably with a follow on contract to develop a superconducting Ada compiler*.
Either take the Ada Mandate seriously and manage it properly, or drop it.
But to continue to spend tens of millions of dollars without honestly knowing
the effectiveness of such policies is a violation of the taxpayer's trust.


		WHAT PERCENT OF THE DOD IS USING ADA ???????


Greg Aharonian


* Maybe the DoD will have the Army develop superconducting versions of their
new object oriented languages to be used with the Air Force's non-Ada AI CASE
environments on the Navy's superconducting workstations to take advantage of
all of ARPA's cutting edge non-Ada software technology while DISA figures out
how to keep entrepreneurs out of next year's Ada Summit and keep Ada out of
the SBIRs.