Re: April 1993: Ada9X mortally wounded in non-Mandated press

[world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian)]

>The Business Week article is indeed inaccurate.  But, what should the
>Government do?  Arrest the author for being wrong?  I really don't
>understand what Greg would have "the Ada community" do in these
>circumstances... 

    Ever hear of marketing?  Ever hear of public relations?  Picking up
the phone and calling an editor?  Placing an ad in a journal?  You don't
know what the Ada community should do?  As an employee of MITRE, a firm
that advises the Air Force in its support of the Mandate, you are telling
me you have no clue what the Ada community should do for all of the bad
press (or no press) that Ada is getting?  You have no idea why Ada needs
more visibility outside the Mandated world for the Mandate to succeed?
If you guys market MITRE like you do Ada, you'd be out of business in a
short time.  What kind of advice do you give the Air Force?

    Wake up.  Outside the Mandated world, Ada is dead, because of the
arrogance of people inside the Mandated world.  No one wants to take
responibility to make sure that Ada succeeds enough across the country
for the Mandate to be meaningful.  Unless enough programmers and tool
companies are attracted to Ada, it will be less cost-effective to
program in Ada, so that the net result of the Mandate will be to make
defense software development costs increase instead of decrease.  Which
is probably what the Ada contractors want anyways.

Greg Aharonian
-- 
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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178