Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

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

>The background to Mr. Aharonian's posting is an announcement from
>AJPO of interesting material that is now available from the SIMTEL
>repository (plus advice on how to get it).  Mr. Aharonian has been
>complaining bitterly that AJPO and related DOD agencies have been
>remiss about letting us (a) know what they have on offer
>(b) avail ourselves of it.  Behold, AJPO starts to redress the
>grievance.

Look, I will admit I made a mistake, and did not realize that the 
courseware came from an academic trying his best to help salvage
Ada.  For that I compliment his efforts, and anyone else trying to
promote Ada, especially with his own money.

However, what I had in mind when writing the initial message was more AJPO's
feeble attempts, and usually the wrong ones, to promote Ada, if at all.  For
example, suppose hypothetically that people from AJPO (and this is very
hypothetical) were to show up regularly at software engineering conferences
and non-Mandated trade shows to promote Ada. That they haven't done this at
all in the past seven years is grounds for firing the lot of them, but let's
imagine they did anyways.

    Now if they were to have a booth where they displayed general literature
on Ada (such as the LRM, some DTIC reports, case studies on the use of Ada
inside the DoD), that would be great.  If they were to display vendor's
literature for any Ada product company that wanted some exposure in the
non-commercial world (hey, I said this was hypothetical), that would be
great also.  If they were to have some PCs with Ada code available for 
display, that would be great, as well as having some Ada books.  In all
of these cases, AJPO is promoting the language without playing favorites
with companies or offering services for free that private Ada companies
could offer.
    However, if AJPO (or in a very, very, very hypothetical case, anyone
from the STARS office) were to show up and display Ada courseware and tools
they have developed and sell or pass out, or Ada consulting services, then
I would object greatly because now these people are hurting the Ada industry
by trying to act like businessmen.  Ada needs more people with a vested
interest in Ada to see it succeed.  Destroying private Ada businesses (for
which my list grows monthly) is a policy the DoD should stop doing.

    So the distinction I was trying to make (and obviously my flippant
answer stopped most of you from thinking about the message) is that there
are ways for AJPO and others to neutrally promote Ada, and there are ways
that hurt private Ada businesses.

>Is Mr. A satisfied?  Does a chicken have lips?

    Since you only attack an easy target such as myself when I make a
mistake, but not the people inside the Mandated World who are killing Ada
with their policies, your actions to me imply, yes, chickens do have lips,
and in this case, fingertips.

>Mr. A is actually more reasonable than he seems.  Some of his
>complaints have merit.  We just have to be cool and selective in
>deciding which ones.

    Keep your sarcastic compliments to yourself.  It seems each time
guys like Ted and myself make the slightest mistake when criticizing
some DoD software policy regarding Ada, everyone on the net flames
us to death.  Well that's fine, as long as you guys publicly flame those
people who we successfully criticize to an equivalent degree of
criticism.  After all, everything I do is with my own money, including
paying for access to the Internet, while most of the people involved
with wasteful DoD software policies are doing it on our tax dollars,
so deserve public criticism much stronger than the abuse you heap on
people such as myself.  So unless you are going to distribute your
criticisms in proportion to the crime being committed, shut up.  I
would much rather look like a fool for making the occasional mistake
on comp.lang.ada, than a hypocrite for criticizing only the real easy
targets.  My question is: are there chicken eunuchs?

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