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From: Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Advice on selling Ada to a C shop
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:40:58 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2010-06-21T14:40:58+00:00
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George Orwell expounded in
news:2bb211f057648e4d892829e5ee79e34c@mixmaster.it: 

>> So, I think the proper approach is to debunk their irrational fears
>> of Ada and expose the real cost of bugs in the C software, which they
>> have been ignoring up to now.  Show them that no, C is not "good
>> enough". 
> 
> I'm going to continue to play the devil's advocate only because I was
> recently involved in a debacle along these lines.
> 
> Whatever they have is good enough. There are very few companies today,
> even software companies, that have not decided bugs, even serious
> bugs, are just a fact of life. They accept they're going to anger or
> even lose some percent of customers, but this is factored in to their
> financial plans. Quality no longer matters, what matters is how much
> money we can soak you for this quarter and how long we can get away
> with it. 

I think you are generally right, until you get to "Quality
no longer matters". I think it usually _does_ matter, but as
you say, they've come to accept bugs as "normal".  A quality
product is still the goal from semi-honest companies. Certainly
from a competitive pov.

> A lot of this has come from the poor quality of PC software (Windows)
> .... All the big companies are moving to offshore

Sad but seemingly true. Worse than that, the programmer is no
longer "needed". Business is always saying "we can do that
ourselves" after they do a few weeks of night school 
on VB and Access.   Eventually, something big goes wrong,
and it all gets swept under a carpet (perhaps after a
dismissal somewhere).

Warren