Re: SEI abandons Ada

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>Perhaps Greg answers his own question.  Could it be that the absence of SEI
>Ada courseware might signal the presence of a ready supply in the commercial
>marketplace?  Of course not.  Such an explanation would tend to cast doubts
>on Greg's conspiracy theories and possibly threaten his Great Hope--namely,
>delivering the performance of a lifetime as the Woman Scorned in
>Ada: The Movie.

Larry,
	Your illogic reflects the illogic governing the rest of Ada policy.
You say SEI is not offering an Ada course because the private sector is
already offering Ada courses, so why duplicate?  Well if SEI really believed
that lie, it would also argue that the private sector is already offering
most of the other courses listed, so SEI shouldn't be offering them either.
But since SEI is offering courses that the private sector is offering, it
should also offer a course about Ada's superior role in software engineering.
Therefore the exclusion of Ada by SEI is a meaningful signal that the SEI
is less and less interested in Ada.
	After all, this reflects signals like when your boss co-authored
the Defense Science Board report on computing in the DoD, a report which
was almost completely silent on Ada even though the Mandate in theory
should affect all aspects of the SEI.
	Face it, just like all of the other porkers, the SEI is following the
commercial instincts of IBM and distancing yourself further and further from
Ada.  And given that SEI does little that the private sector isn't already
doing a hundred-fold more in scope, explain why this country should continue
to dump taxdollars into the SEI?  If what you are doing is of relevance to
anyone, then you, like the STARS program, should be able to earn your money
on the open market.  If not, then why should we waste tax dollars on it.
Maybe if you publicly were evangelizing Ada I could see it, otherwise not.

	I don't offer conspiracy theories, which you assert, but greed
theories.  A lot of contractors got tons of money from the DoD to say they
liked Ada, knowing that the DoD would be unable to effectively manage Ada
policies and be unable to do anything to the contractors when they abandoned
the language as the pork ran out.   I regret that these contractors didn't
want to apply these commercial exploitation skills to helping Ada, instead
of trough dollars.

	So your excuses for SEI's not offering an Ada course don't hold up.
Any such excuse would apply equally as well to the other courses, which SEI
is offering.  Why?  Because the SEI wants to come off as a software engineering
guru kind of place, and you can do that (based on Ada contractor behavior)
by publicly associating yourself with Ada.

Greg Aharonian