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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: (unverified) Ada mandate cancelled (Greg A would be proud)
Date: 1997/03/10
Message-ID: <EACHUS.97Mar10154834@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 224481173
References: <3.0.32.19970307192557.009979a0@iu.net> <dewar.857857451@merv>
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-03-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <dewar.857857451@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

  > The idea of making Ada a preferred technology rather than
  > mandating it might very well be advantageous even from an Ada
  > advocate's point of view.  Far too often now, Ada is mandated, but
  > in practice someone is acting as though some other technology is
  > preferred. A genuine policy of preferring Ada, other things being
  > equal, might well be preferable. For example, this would mean that
  > hardware supporting Ada should be preferred over hardware that
  > does not support Ada.

   There is one Catch-22 I will be glad to get rid of.  Right now on
DoD programs, the "kiss of death" for the use of Ada or even the use
of some hardware is the existance of an UNvalidated Ada compiler for
that platform.  The mandate says you can't use the unvalidated
compiler, and a waiver is difficult if not impossible to get because
there is an Ada compiler (usually with a lapsed validation).

   There are also projects where a validation or three is essentially
a negligible cost compared to the risk avoided.  (I've worked on a
couple.)  We need a policy to deal with both.

   
--

					Robert I. Eachus

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