Re: Datapro announces survey of ObjectOrient languages

[world!srctran@decwrl.dec.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>The comparative language statistics that you reference are all statistics
>on "present" usage of "OO programming languages".  Considering that much of
>the OO community (actually, I would be willing to argue that most of the
>OO community) does not consider Ada an OO programming language, you have
>to admit that the absence of Ada-83 in this arena is not surprising.  
>When Ada-9X becomes available then perhaps the absence of Ada in the OO
>community would carry a bit more credibility.

Steve,
	Thank you for the interesting comment, which like my initial comment
has been and is, and probably is true for some time.  However, consider the
following points.   Ada83 does have some object oriented capabilities (if
you refer to the taxpayer funded literature on Ada83, you will see a fair
amount of claims for this), with generics maybe not great capabilities but
at the time of its introduction enough to be involved with the OO community.
With some of the Ada systems like DRAGOON which bring more OO stuff to Ada83,
there is certainly enough grounds for the Ada community now to participate
in the OO world.
	But they don't.  Almost every OO conference and trade show has
absolutely no Ada presence, either Ada83 or Ada9X.  There are few Ada
articles in the OO journals, and from talking with contacts at many major
computer publications, little activity on the part of the Ada community in
contacting the trade press to make the case for Ada.
	So we both agree that Ada83 has been poorly evangelized by the
Defense community to date and that's why it does not appear in such reviews
as the Datapro survey.

	You then make the very wishful hope that "When Ada-9X becomes
available, then perhaps the absence of Ada in the OO community would carry
a bit more credibility".  Let me explain why this unfortunate circumstance
will come to pass, mainly for considerations that you as a student have yet
to encounter in the real world.
	I'll concede that Ada9X wil probably shape up tobe a great OO
language.  When it comes to the technical competence of the Ada9X committee
headed by Christine Anderson, I have only praise.  Thus it will be easy,
if anyone cares to, to make the case for Ada9X in the non-Mandated world.
However, under current DoD leadership, this will never happen, for the
following reasons.
	Anyone with any business sense, and therefore concluding they should
be responsible for spending Ada tax dollars, knows that many companies around
the country and making their committments to objected oriented programming
over the next few years, and as now as we speak (or email).  It will probably
take another few years for most companies to select on their OO technology,
and begin making investments at their companies.
	However, once companies make their investments, they will be very
reluctant to switch to a new language or methodology.  Unlike the people in
the Pentagon, who have ample tax dollars to start and stop software initiatives
and change them in mind stream on a whim (like their software reuse efforts),
companies do not have this luxury.  You get fired or demoted for doing things
like that at companies in the non-Mandated world.  Further executives are
going to be reluctant for their company to choose a language that they have
never heard of (from their cursory skimming of Computerworld - "ADA? What
has the disability act have to do with programming?").
	Thus the window of opportunity for becoming a major OO language only 
will remain open for a few more years.  Given that it will take that long for
Ada9X to be finalized, fully approved, standardized, and have compilers
debugged and tested, by the time the Ada9X community is ready to make the
case for Ada9X (if they even care at all), most windows will be shut.  And
given the lousy track record of the DoD (especially AJPO), the compiler
vendors and the Ada software initiatives contractors (STARS) in promoting
Ada outside the mandated world, where they have to spend their own money,
I doubt highly the case for Ada9X will be made any better than any case for
Ada83.  Sometime ask Tucker Taft what percent of the money Intermetrics
receives for its Ada consulting to the DoD that it spends on evangelizing
Ada in the non-Mandated world.   Can you spell Z E R O.
	Whichever socialists insisted on, and pushed for, the Ada Mandate
should have realized that it would only work if someone was out there making
the case for Ada with a great capitalistic marketing job for Ada.  As my
many posts on the complete absence of Ada in the non-Mandated world (i.e.
by measuring ads for compilers, help wanted ads, booth space at trade shows,
articles in magazines, source code in university theses, commercial seminars
for programming languages), it is obvious that no one is making the case
for Ada, no one wants to make the case for Ada, leading to its virtual
absence in the non-Mandated world, which undermines implicit assumptions
used to justify the imposition of the Mandate, which leads to the thought
that under present conditions of the apathy of Ada's health outside the
Mandated world, that the Mandate is a potential threat to national security
by making it increasingly difficult for the DoD, with shrinking budgets,
to meet all of its programming needs.

Just my one dollars worth, which is what I have to pay with my own money
to get Internet access.

Anyways, thanks for the comment on the post.


Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization

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