Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

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

Interesting, but rather foolish, I would think. There are all sorts of
technologies or other forms of human knowledge that have come about because
of some sort of military endeavor or military involvement. (Like, oh, mayby
things ranging from emergency room surgery techniques to most of the space
program?) Failure to study and employ such knowledge just because the
military once touched it sounds a little like cutting off one's nose to
spite one's face.

In any event, while I'm sure that there are many on college campuses who
would be capable of such an attitude towards Ada, I doubt that it had a lot
to do with its failure to catch on in a big way. I think it was more a
matter of mismanagement in the early stages and the technology not being
there to back up all the claims of wonderfulness. Basically, in the early
stages Ada just cost too much and didn't work and was taking too long too in
curing either of those problems. As a result it got a bad reputation and was
ignored in droves. Now the money that might have funded the sort of
improvements needed has dried up, so its advancement is going to be a slow
evolution based on the work of small companies and assorted hackers. Maybe
its better that way. At least whatever Ada gets at this point has been
rightfully earned and nobody is going to say "You got the job only because
of The Mandate..."

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

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    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> wrote in message
news:slrnb3a9p3.ph5.Colin_Paul_Gloster@camac.dcu.ie...
>
> How widespread such campaigns were I do not know, but I once was told by
> somebody that he and others involved in university (not in America) had
> successfully campaigned against Ada being taught. This person told me that
> he and his colleagues campaigned against Ada not because of the amount of
> money involved, but because they were against war.