Re: Admiral Tuttle (Should be ...) Revisited

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

Colin James types:
>Getting back to Admiral Tuttle's comments, the subject is really closed
>because of what Ralph Crafts quotes Tuttle's boss as saying.

   The subject isn't be closed, because what Tuttle's boss says doesn't
make much difference.  People inside the DoD will pay as much attention
to Paige's directive as they do to the Ada Mandate, i.e., very little.
Besides, the DoD itself doesn't care that much either, otherwise it would
show more attention in finding out what people are doing with programming
languages inside the DoD.  On top of which, other bosses of Tuttle probably
agree with Tuttle.

   Paige's directive has no teeth behind it, so people are going to ignore 
it just like they ignore the Federal law of the Mandate.  ARPA is continually
on the record of not giving a damn what guys like Paige have to say about
Ada.  The Navy, as represented by the NRL and ONR, are too busy trying to
solve problems to care about using Ada.  And I could bore comp.lang.ada to
death with story after story about Army and Air Force units being successful
with non-Ada.  So Paige's directive (which he should have posted here),
means nothing and will have no effect, simply because few inside the DoD
believe the sincerity of the top Brass when it comes to Ada.

    Besides, Tuttle has many bosses, not just Paige.  One of his other
bosses is Deputy Secretary Perry, who is making this BIG push to get the
DoD to use COTS stuff wherever possible, trying to boost the idea of dual
use technology cost advantages.   Well most COTS stuff is not done in Ada
(less than two percent of all COTS stuff has Ada inside), so Perry's
policy, if successful, will do as much to undermine Ada as the current
hypocrisy that is tolerated.

    So from Tuttle's point, who does he support?  Paige or Perry?  (Actually
as long as his fellow Admirals support his actions, Tuttle can do whatever
he wants), especially (if he chooses non-Ada) when he has the ONR, NRL, and
ARPA behind him.

    Given reasonable time and money, I can prove that the majority of the
DoD does not support the Ada Mandate, as reflected in what they do, not
what they say.  The DoD knows this, because they fear to actually find out.
-- 
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 Greg Aharonian
 Source Translation & Optimization
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178