Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

[Gregory Aharonian]

    Great.  One more way to make it harder for any Ada company trying to
sell Ada courseware.  Karl must be smiling once again.

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

Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

[Christopher J. Henrich]

In article <SRCTRAN.93May5234233@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:
>    Great.  One more way to make it harder for any Ada company trying to
>sell Ada courseware.  Karl must be smiling once again.
                       ^^^^ How is Karl Nyberg involved...? Oh, er,
                            never mind (embarrassed :-) )
>
>Greg

When the clock strikes 13 (see summary line), not only the last
stroke but all previous ones are open to question.

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

I hope nobody has counted very much on success in making
Mr. A feel better.  

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.

Regards,
Chris Henrich

Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

[Mark A. Breland]

In article 14644@tinton.ccur.com, cjh@tinton.ccur.com (Christopher J. Henrich) 
writes:
>In article <SRCTRAN.93May5234233@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:
>>    Great.  One more way to make it harder for any Ada company trying to
>>sell Ada courseware.  Karl must be smiling once again.
>>
>>Greg
>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.  Is Mr. A satisfied?  Does a chicken have lips?

Ahhhhh, yet Greg's quote above was made with tongue inserted firmly in
cheek.  Remember his castigation of Ada vendors for being remiss in the
marketing of their Ada products.  It sure does portray the Government and
the vendors as partners de amour when public domain software (which would
compete directly with that of vendors) is not fully publicized.  I think
Greg has begun to see half his battle starting to turn his way, and applauds
AJPO for doing what he's been calling for.  Now, maybe this might just be the
spark to get the vendors out of their comfortable chair, and start marketing
their wares more aggressively.  Alas, ten years of inertia and precious
few Don Quixotes...

>I hope nobody has counted very much on success in making
>Mr. A feel better.  

Everybody who cares if Greg feels better raise your hand...hmmm, there's
one (thanks Greg).  Now everybody who cares for the success of Ada as a
language raise your hand...looks like we've exceeded our array constraint.

---
Mark A. Breland - Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
Ada Fault Tolerance                               | voice:    (512) 338-3509
3500 West Balcones Center Drive                   | FAX:      (512) 338-3900
Austin, Texas 78759-6509   USA                    | internet: breland@mcc.com

Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

[Michael Feldman]

In article <SRCTRAN.93May5234233@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:
>    Great.  One more way to make it harder for any Ada company trying to
>sell Ada courseware.  Karl must be smiling once again.
>
Oh, for Heaven's sake, Greg. This is not competition for the courseware
companies, whose clients are (and should be) industry. This is one
outcome of the curriculum development project for _university_ courseware.
Even if there were enough content similarity to go both ways, universities
typically have little or no courseware budget. But the two needs are
very different, should be served by different software/courseware.

This is similar to a long line of curriculum development/improvement
programs sponsored traditionally by NSF. I don't think industry has 
bitched about these, because they see them as improving college education.

Why must we constantly be mixing apples and oranges? Back off till you've
done your homework...

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"The most important thing is to be sincere, 
and once you've learned how to fake that, you've got it made." 
-- old show-business adage
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Courseware available in SE, OOD, OOP

[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