Re: Anybody in US using ADA ?

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

I never said it was "right" - just "reality". :-) I agree, if one is
contemplating a new system from bottom-dead-center then one ought to
consider all of the inputs and decide what provides the best solution. But
new systems from bottom-dead-center are the exception. Almost always, you're
dealing with evolutionary growth or enhancement of some existing system or a
new project living within an existing context. Hence someone already has a
big investment in infrastructure that isn't going to get discarded just
because there exists some superior technology somewhere. (Example: A bank
needs some new accounting package that must operate on its existing
mainframe(s) & peripherials, against its existing database, maintained by
its existing staff, etc. They already have an OS, a Cobol compiler, a
database product and a heavy investment in tools, utilities, libraries, etc.
to operate here and the new system has to interact with the existing
applications. What are the odds someone is going to talk them into switching
to Ada for that new development?)

Maybe that's part of why there was/is a lot of resentment toward Ada. It
walked in the door with a mandate and everyone had big investments in other
things and the feeling was "This is going to cost me truckloads in
discarding my existing investment and for what? An uncertain 'technical
advantage'? Why are they trying to make my life harder?"

This is why Ada's best hope would be to attach itself to some new, emerging
technology where it doesn't have to displace existing technology and can
itself become the entrenched status quo. Barring that, it has to find some
groundswell of usage out in the hacker world so that there is some large
infrastructure of practical things in use that keep it afloat. (Another
version of "new technology") I don't see it doing either one unless it
offers the world some significant edge over the existing technology and
"reduced errors" isn't selling. "Time to market" probably would.

MDC
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message news:VfKQ9.193788$qF3.13607@sccrnsc04...
> > Job postings try to look for very specific skills
>   The necessary implication being that the design has already been
> frozen - "we will be using this language, that database, this kind
> of UI, ...".
>   I read an interesting essay recently that pointed out that color TV,
> UHF, and cable were all technically feasible in 1948 when TVs were in less
> than 1% of American households.  But we had three black and white VHF
> network channels for a very long time because of industry structure&power
> reasons.  I suppose there were lots of job postings for B/W VHF tuner
> designers, and few for people who knew UHF etc.