From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_50 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 7 Jul 93 14:32:57 GMT From: world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Why soldiers are afraid of Ada Message-ID: List-Id: The July 7, 1993 issue of the Boston Globe had an article about worries and anger inside the military under President Clinton. One statement has a major bearing on Ada. "A 1990 survey by the Army Research Institute found that 25 percent to 33 percent of service personnel feared they would not be able to find work in the civilian sector if necessaary, and expressed concerns about their long term prospects inside the army. By 1992, the anxiety rate had almost doubled, with 62 percent of enlisted soldiers and 43 percent of officers questioned saying they were very worried about their long-term prospects for their military careers." [page 14] And what worried these people? Currently there are 50 to 100 times more private sector C/C++ jobs than there are Ada jobs, as any sampling of help wanted ads in metropolitan newspapers will reveal. Thus there is not much of a market for Ada skills, especially when companies are inundated with resumes from many highly qualified applicants with the exact language skills they request in the ads, reducing chances of soldiers arguing "Haven't used C/C++, but Ada is better and I am a quick learner". Given these worries of soldiers, and marketplace job realities, it is quite easy to see why the Ada Mandate is being ignored so much inside the DoD. Soldiers are optimizing their long term prospects at little cost to their short term careers, comforted by the contradictory statements coming out of the Pentagon brass about Ada. -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimization P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178