Re: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics (why not Universities?)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Per Dalgas Jakobsen wrote:

>>>>But how can we get the attention of the executives?
>>>>Let the brainstorm start ;-)
>>>
>>>That's the real problem :)
>>
>>No, the real problem is that executives = management and management =
>>morons and morons are in charge.
> 
> Well, I understand your view, but I have (almost) never seen a person that
> acted irrational, when seing things from a certain point of view.
> That view might not be yours for several reasons, one being that you know
> more about some stuff than they do or visa versa.

I would generally agree: its not about managers being morons,
but seeing things from a different point of view. Part of the
tension is that developers don't want to expend the effort
necessary to "sell the idea". They don't use the right
facts and presentation to "sell it" (developers know code,
but often fail to know how to sell or present an idea).
So that is part of it (some of the other part is below..)

> The problem being most project managers do not have the courage to put their
> reputation at stake to make an unorthodox decision, because all the other
> project managers will know immediately where to point fingers if the project
> runs off track, disregarding the real reason (the majority are right...).

Agreed - lack of courage is another factor. Its easy to
support a project that uses technology that you don't
have to "sell".  Project managers must also "sell the
idea" (Ada) to their upper management.  So even if the project
management is sold (because the developers helped sell
Ada), they must now expend energy with courage to upper
management. It is very tough to sell something, when
everyone else in the meeting room is against the idea.
It is even tougher, if the upper management has developed
a stronger level of trust with others in the room.

So as I see it, Ada right away has two major points of
failure in the corporate scene:

   1. Developers fail to sell Ada to their manager/project-manager
   2. Project managers fail to sell to their management/clients

Lack of effort and/or courage at either level, will cause
the path of least resistance to be used. Only a thick
skin and zeal can overcome it.

> Thats why it makes no sense to try forcing Ada from the bottom up (even
> though Linux seems to have accomplished that to a certain extend), but let
> it enter at top level and let the executives suggest it, so the project
> managers have their backs free.

I disagree with this. The developer leads need to convince
their managers/project managers, if Ada has any hope in
a shop that doesn't do any/much Ada. If the developer team
won't support it, then why would anyone above them support
it?

OTOH, if the developers don't support it, but the manager
does (because he knows about Ada from a prior life etc.),
then he must first get his team to buy into the idea.
Questions often get directed at the technical people for
their opinion. If they won't support Ada, then upper
management won't have the courage (no warm and fuzzies).

Once the "lower level" is behind the idea, then you might
have hope at convincing the upper level (but the project
manager will need courage and persistance).

So I would say it is _necessary_ to support Ada from the
bottom up. Without support from the bottom, why choose
an option that looks risky at the higher levels?

> One way to get their attention could be to suggest Berkeley or Oxford (or
> whoever makes these kinds of analyses) to make a thorough investigations
> based on real business cases, with help from "people in the business" = us,
> and make them do all the economical consequence maths, for very small
> projects with no safety critical issues, to very large projects with all the
> whistles and bells.

I think there is already enough "evidence". The problem as
I see it, is one of acceptance. But perhaps, Universities
can help some..

If more Universities would teach and use Ada in their
curriculum, then people would come out of them knowing
and preferring Ada.

In fact this is an area that surprises me most of all!

Why don't univesities naturally prefer Ada?!?!?

Ada is so nice in that it allows the writer to code the
program in terms that make sense to the algorithm. Array
bounds can be set to match the algorthm (like -3..3 for
example), without worrying about implementation issues.
In most other languages, you are constantly mapping
array indexes that the algorithm needs to 0..n-1 or
1..n etc., depending up the language chosen etc.  Generics
and other nice facilities in the Ada language would seem
to make it a natural for theoretical work and research.
Certainly correctness is important to research?

So what surprises me most, is why Universities
don't naturally prefer Ada, when it lets you abstract
your code to match the model in your mind?  Instead,
many profs seem to dismiss Ada in favour of trendy
things like Java. Yet evidence abounds in how well
students do with Ada, over other languages.

So I find this real hard to understand.

This leads me to conclude that most of these
people either just never came to know Ada
well enough, or have never understand the
benefits of the language. To me, Ada would
seem most natural fit for University work.
-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg