From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7ddcc6ac1fff1158 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Re: SEI abandons Ada Date: 1995/04/06 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100939352 sender: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) references: <1995Apr3.144201.25942@sei.cmu.edu> organization: The World newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1995-04-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: >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