Re: Ichbiah's letter to Anderson: Here it is

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

>     I'm willing to listen to the argument that failure to promote Ada is
>short-sighted on the part of Ada vendors, although I don't consider that a
>settled issue.  However, since the government itself has no right to demand
>that they spend any of their profits on promoting Ada, I have no idea why
>Greg has appointed himself to this role.

    The government has the right to demand contractors do whatever is in
the best interests of the country.  If the contractors doesn't want to
comply, they can get business elsewhere.  Look at the current administration,
with its "let's make the government a venture capital investor".  It's
telling companies how to do technology transfer.  The government is always
intervening in the marketplace - just look at how Japan's governmment
turned the Nikkei index around.

    You can't be that naive to not realize that if someone from the DoD
called Intermetrics management and "suggested" that they place some Ada
ads, that Intermetrics would place these ads.

    But with the Ada Mandate as a national law, the DoD (which I assume
supports the Mandate and pushed for it), has to make sure that the
language is thriving enough to insure a sufficient supply of programmers,
tools, and advanced software technology compatibility.  Outside the
Mandated world, Ada is practically non-existent to the extent that
TRW's Mosemann study prediction that Ada will eventually cost more to use
than C++ is coming true quicker and quicker.

    Given the Mandate, and the reality of Ada, when all of its contractors
and compiler vendors drop the ball promoting Ada, its up to the DoD to
assume the responsibility, especially to demand more from anyone taking
Ada money.

   Right now, ignoring the Cobol and Fortran communities, Ada makes up
less than four percent of all non-Mandated software development activities,
jobs, programmers, tools, products and companies, after ten years of
billion dollar budgets going into programs using Ada.  The language is
dead, and Ada9X with its upward incompatibility and wait-till-its-ready
marketing strategy won't make a bit of difference, GIVEN THE DOD'S USE
OF ITS CURRENT ADA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING CONTRACTORS, and given success
stories like JINTACCS, internal DoD efforts cost-effectively and
successfully using C/C++.

     And getting back to Tucker, I would much rather see the Ada9X efforts
in the hands of Ichbiah and Alsys, who spend their money promoting Ada,
as opposed to Taft and Intermetrics, who spend their money promoting C.


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