Re: Admiral Tuttle

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

    Let's see, Admiral Tuttle says Ada has not evolved, cannot evolve
rapidly enough to provide timely acess to the best new methods, Ada does
not support OO programming, distributed computing, parallel processing, 
will not provide many capabilities already widely available through C++,
use of other fourth generation languages should be encouraged, etc.

    In the words of John Belushi,  EEEEEEXXXXXXXCCCCCCCCUUUUUUSSSSSEEEEE ME!
I guess the grapevine stories I have heard about the Navy being against
Ada are true.  Let's see, since ARPA has long argued that the Ada Mandate
law does not apply to them and have been funding non-Ada stuff 10 to 1 over
Ada stuff, it safe to conclude that in the language turf wars, ARPA will
be against Ada.  It now appears that the Navy will be joining ARPA.
At best, we have ARPA and the Navy battling against the Army and the Air
Force.

    Who will win?  Right now my money is on the ARPA/Navy coalition, for
the following reasons.  ARPA is pretty much unified in its disinterest to
Ada, except for its being forced to oversee the STARS program (which given
the waste there with things like ASSET makes me believe this is a ploy by
ARPA against Ada), since there is little Ada can offer to the software
research programs ARPA funds.  I think the Navy is growingly more unified
in its disinterest to Ada, based on the private email I get from managers
who deal with Navy program managers.  Also, if you remember the Ada/C++
studies of 1991, the Naval Postgraduate School's substudy was the most
critical of the Ada claims made by the other substudies.  Also the Navy's
ALS experiences probably left a bad taste.  So I see a strong position in
the dump Ada camp.
    On the Air Force / Army side, I do see many public accounts of successes
with Ada and a fair amount of pro-Ada commentary from higher ups in these
two services.  However, most of the non-Ada programming language success
stories I see in the public press come out of the Air Force and Army. And
to be honest, as much as I respect AFIT, a major training ground for Air
Force officers, as measured by their language use in theses, Ada has not
been overwhelming embraced.

    If Tuttle's comments reflect a growing feeling inside the Navy, while
ARPA continues its apathy policies towards Ada, and with pre-RIF soldiers
worrying about future job prospects in the C/C++ marketplace, all it will
take will be for a major defection in the Air Force/Army camp to tip the
Pentagon balance against Ada in a significant enough way to be the
beginning of the end for the Mandate. (I can't see where the defection
will come from - things are too cloudly right now).

    To be really, truly, ethically honest, I have to confess that I actually
kidnapped Admiral Tuttle on the way to his speech, put on a very high tech
costume (along the lines of "Total Recall") supplied to me by ARPA, and gave
this very undermining-to-Ada speech  :-)   The Navy is solidly behind Ada.
-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian
 Source Translation & Optimization
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178