Re: Ada promotion, etc., yet again.

Re: Ada promotion, etc., yet again.

[Gregory Aharonian]

>I continue to believe that - while I am glad for AdaIC's participation in
>things like this as one of the players - it is _not_ the government's job
>to promote Ada in the wide world. It is time for Ada to stand on its own.
>It is up to the industry, not the government, to treat Ada as they would
>any other product. Market it, sell it, advertise it, support it, go to
>conferences, write articles, etc. For the government to do this - beyond
>looking out for its own programmatic interests and providing seed money -
>is a waste of my tax dollars, and lets the industry off the hook.

Mike,
	Get rid of the Mandate and I will agree with you one hundred
percent.  I won't care what anyone does with any langauge, relying on
market forces to separate the wheat from the chaff.
	But as long as the use of Ada is forced on people, a national
law on which national security is based, a law which is based on unknown
microeconomics of defense software development (for which there are as
many DoD studies saying the Mandate can work as there are DoD studies
saying the Mandate can't work [if you know where to look]), they I argue
that someone has to accept responsbility for Ada's success inside the
Pentagon - someone to say "yes - if it fails, it's my fault", someone
who argues inside the Pentagon on why the DoD should get tougher and 
demand more from its Ada contractors (like showing up in public anywhere),
someone to push for changes in DoD regulations so that the DoD can benefit
from the software market forces and see Ada succeed on its own merits.

   As long as the Mandate exists, one or more people inside the Pentagon
must assume responsbility for the health of the language, someone who
understands market forces, someone who maintains detailed knowledge of
the demographics of programming languages inside and outside the Mandated
world.

   But I see no one assuming this role - ESD, AJPO, ADAIC, STARS, KBSA,
DSRO, DARPA, STSC, no one.  No matter you say, I have yet to see probably
the longest running standing joke about the DoD's apathy towards Ada -
the fact that they have oodles and oodles of Generals and Admirals, yet
not one of these people has Ada in his title.  For ten years, this standard
test of DoD interest in something has been failed.

   The DoD's hands off approach to dealing with Ada, you would think that the
language was named after, and dedicated to,   Alan Turing  :-)

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