From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,92c39a3be0a7f17d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-12-01 16:45:59 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-01!supernews.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sea-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: Future with Ada In-Reply-To: <3C0924D6.2B5A3087@adaworks.com> Message-ID: References: <3wdH7.20135$xS6.32614@www.newsranger.com> <9tqete0gqc@drn.newsguy.com> <3C0924D6.2B5A3087@adaworks.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 00:46:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.220.65.223 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: sea-read.news.verio.net 1007253961 192.220.65.223 (Sun, 02 Dec 2001 00:46:01 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 00:46:01 GMT Organization: Verio Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:17288 Date: 2001-12-02T00:46:01+00:00 List-Id: On Sat, 1 Dec 2001, Richard Riehle wrote: > "ben@NO_SPAM_EMAIL" wrote: > > That is funny. It is almost impossible to find any Ada wanted ads these days. > > Actually there are more openings for almost any other language than for Ada. > > > > Can you point to ONE commerical Ada opening right now that requires no > > active security clearance in the US? I bet you there is none. > > Over and over, we encounter companies who, after deciding to use Ada for > its technological advantages, cannot hire qualified Ada programmers. Our > most recent experience was a company in Silicon Valley. They were excited > about using Ada, asked us to train some of the people, and then tried to hire > more programmers to do Ada. They found it nearly impossible to find > people with experience in their domain, sufficient mathematics, and lots > of experience in Ada. Well, duh! These people must be pretty dumb. Overconstrain the problem and there are no solutions. Did they think about hiring people who don't know Ada? Ada is a fairly easy language to learn IMO, *far* easier than C++, especially if you're willing to omit concurrency. As a resident of the aforementioned valley, there are a number of reasons I've never had an Ada job. (1) Availability of jobs here. I almost never see them. (2) Pay. When I do see them, they want to pay far less than the valley average. Sorry, it costs a lot to live here, so companies had better pay more. (3) The security thing. I have no qualms about working on weapons (better that *we* have'em than not I say), but if someone insists on a security clearance up front almost everyone is hosed. I never saw a job solicitation from an SV company here, so it seems that your clients neglected this newsgroup. Doesn't seem like they tried too hard. > Sadly, they finally decided to use C++ because it was so much easier to > find programmers. It's easier to find Perl and Java programmers too I suppose, or even just plain old C programmers. This sounds like a lame excuse. Ada is easy enough to learn. > In those same organizations, many programmers don't want to program in Ada > because they see few commercial opportunities for that skill. These programmers > don't care whether Ada is a better language. They care about the future of their > career. The companies don't care whether Ada is superior to C++. They > often admit it is. They do care about being able to hire people who want to > program in Ada. Hmmph. I took a job programming in OCaml, far less widely used than Ada. Why people worry about this is beyond me. I wouldn't want a job where the language du-jour was the primary considertaion. Been there, done that (with Java) and as Alex Stepanov said, it doesn't smell so good. > One can dismiss this as a "chicken and egg" problem. However, it is a problem > that needs solving. Hire willing programmers who don't know Ada and train them. It is *not* that hard! A good programmer will not be hung up on surface syntax and will be able to take much of their knowledge of C/C++/Java over to Ada. Much of the interesting Ada work we see now is in the open source community. That's great, but there needs to be some more activity in the commercial world too. FWIW, I've discussed Ada quite a bit with my manager and he acknowledges that it's a lot better than C, C++ or Java, from his POV. We use OCaml but if we had to do some C level work I'd have no problem doing it in Ada. There are a *lot* of managers and programmers who are willing to try new things. Thank goodness (really Schonberg, Dewar, and the rest of ACT) that there is a high quality, free Ada compiler so that prospective users can kick the tires instead of just reading! -- Brian