Re: Ada News Brief - 96-05-24.txt [1/1]

[Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu>]

On 27 May 1996, Tucker Taft wrote:

> AdaIC (adainfo@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us) wrote:
> : Ada News Brief
> : Week Ending: May 24, 1996
>
> : ... Tucker Taft, chief scientist of Intermetrics, Inc.,
> : stated, "Of course they would love to see Java as the next
> : Ada in DoD. It's a lot of hype.
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  This is either a misquote,
> or taken out of context.  I am a fan of Java, and I don't think it
> is just a lot of hype.

   Thanks for making this correction, Tucker. It was a little surprising
   to think you might view Java as a lot of hype.  In some respects, it
   probably is.  However, it does demonstrate some very nice capabilities
   for representing ideas in software.

> Be that as it may, I do believe Ada has a number of
> advantages,

   [snip, snip, snip]

  Along with the comparisons you cite, there is also the problem with
  Java's proletarianization of the software product.  This will lead to a
  question of just what it is that software developers actually sell. If
  we are selling the bloom of our gray matter in the form of a complex
  array of binary digits, we have some interest in protecting that bloom
  from others for our personal economic benefit.

  Java's democratic nature is a blessing for open exhange of ideas. It
  would not lend itself easily to the protection of ideas.  When we want
  to minimize the risk of sacrificing our intellectual property through
  too easy public access, nothing does the job as well as Ada.

  There is still some virtue in keeping some ideas secret. Ada does that
    better than Java.


   Richard Riehle