Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Richard Riehle" <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3CBCE84E.811EA1C3@adaworks.com...
>
> OK, let's get this straight.    The DoD has not decided to quit Ada.   I
still
> correspond with former Assistant Secretary of Defense Emmett Paige
> from time to time and I gather that one of his disappointments is the
> misinterpretation of his memo abrogating the Ada mandate.   If I may

I think the problem was a huge misjudgement of how his memo would be
interpreted. Maybe Secretary Paige didn't intend for the memo to be
interpreted as the DoD abandoning Ada, but that sure was the net effect.
Perhaps part of it was willfull misinterpretation on the part of some who
hated Ada and The Mandate so they could use it as an excuse to rush off and
do what they wanted to in the first place. Perhaps there was a kind of a
logical inference on the part of others that this is what it meant: "You
used to insist that Ada was the right answer and now you're saying 'go forth
and select whatever makes sense' so I can reasonably guess that this amounts
to 'Ada was a mistake'..."

Sometimes perception *is* reality. Especially when we're dealing in a
political & social realm. Once The Mandate was instituted, any attempt to
back off from it was going to be perceived as weakness and lack of resolve.
Once that chink showed up in the armor, the Ada Haters of America charged in
to exploit it with gusto and the more ambivalent ones in the crowd stuck
their fingers into the air to find which way the wind was blowing and
decided it wasn't towards Ada.

Maybe The Mandate was a mistake to begin with. Maybe it should have been
abandoned. But if abandonment of The Mandate had to be done and there wasn't
a desire to simultaneously abandon Ada, then perhaps the DoD could have done
more to show it still thought Ada was a good idea and that it supported it.
(DoD could have allocated significant money to build development tools,
etc., that might have made Ada a more attractive choice, for example.)
Instead, they effectively said "you're on your own - sink or swim..." which
clearly added to the perception that DoD was "abandoning" Ada.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com