Re: Free Hawaii trip if you buy my Ada products

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

>     I'll paraphrase the mandate again, even throwing in a little background
>that doesn't actually appear in the text of the resolution.  It's saying, "We
>made a decision in the late '70s that the way to reduce software costs in the
>DoD is to rely on a single language.  Now that we have that language, that's
>what will be used unless it can be shown that costs can be reduced even more
>by using something else."

   Well then I say, given the questionable economic analysis I have seen in
the Ada world in the last ten years (just check out the confusion at the SEI
and STARS, and Strassman's contradictory statements on Ada economics), I say
that I question the economic analysis of the 1970's that led to the decision
to adopt Ada.  I would bet any amount of money that if the original quesiton
that led to Ada was asked today, the answer would not be Ada today.
   Another reason I question the economic analyses of the 1970's is that
the DoD never took steps to verify through data collection and analysis all
of the promises made at the start of Ada (and programs like STARS) when
great benefits were predicted.  And when programs like STARS admit that some
of their initial promises were lies, it is not much of a stretch to wonder
about the validty of the promises made by Ada.

    Look, most of the people currently and previously involved with Ada are
not businessmen.  They are bureaucrats, whether they work for the government
or not.  There is no community sense of Ada marketing, publicity, return
on investments, competition, etc.  That's why C/C++ is kicking ass outside
the Mandated World - their proponentts are businessmen paying careful
attention to how they spend their own money.  Look at DoD software reuse.
The DoD is spending tens of millions of dollars a year on software reuse,
yet no one involved has ever spent their own money on Ada reuse as a
business practice.  Is it no wonder that the country has received nothing
in return for this investment?  Similarly look at STARS.  Again, few
involved spend their own money on Ada software engineering products and
fight for market share.  If you can afford to go to Tri-Ada, ask yourself
why at general industry shows, at best only one or two booths are staffed
by Ada companies, while at Tri-Ada, over forty companies will be present.
Ada is not an industry, but a co-dependents society.  "Hi! My name is John,
and I can't stop spending other people's money on Ada".

    Ada is a great language.  Unfortunately it is surrounded by some of
the most failed economic and business practices this side of the ex-Iron
curtain.   Billions of dollars spent on Ada projects times a government
multiplier effect, and Ada has less than a two percent share of the modern
programming language market?  Sounds like a sheltered industry to me.

    You ask me to accept a policy developed twenty years ago in a completely
different software engineering and hardware environment as being relevant
today.  That is utter nonsense, something you wouldn't support and tout for
a second if you were spending significant amounts of your own money on the
langauge.  You think the people at STARS would pay with their own money the
bills they are racking up giving people toll-free 800-number access to the
ASSET repository.  Not for one second.

   The armed forces of this country decided to use and decided to drop the
cavalry, rifles, sailing ships, and other weapons of war.  And as soon as
the DoD can find a face-saving way to drop the Mandate, it will.  Tuttle
and Strassman's comments are as reflective of general DoD feelings as
anything else I have heard spouted by DoD types.  I get too much private
email with gripes and frustrations from all levels of the Army, Air Force,
Navy, DoD schools, SEI, STARS, etc, to believe that harmony reigns with
Ada policy.

    I don't believe any of the economic and business claims that the
officialdom of Ada put forth.  I have seen too many stunts like the one
SEI pulled in 1990 and 1991 to believe otherwise (and what's worse is that
no one knows what I am referring to).

>If somebody wants to use something other than Ada, the burden of proving
>cost-effectiveness is on them; the Ada proponents are not required to prove
>that Ada is more cost-effective.

"You women want to vote and govern?  Show us how that will be better than a
society where only men vote."

It was an idiotic argument two thousand years ago, it was an idiotic argument
one hundred years ago, and it is an idiotic argument today, no matter what it
is applied to.


-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian                                      srctran@world.std.com
 Source Translation & Optimization                            617-489-3727
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178