From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: f8899,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: 10dd18,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: f4fd2,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8899,gid10dd18,gidf4fd2,gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: kevin cline Newsgroups: comp.lang.haskell, comp.lang.python, comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Choosing a new language Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 09:25:16 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <20071228162351.f29a3ce4.coolzone@it.dk> <81737bc2-99df-4295-b894-19d3ba47662e@c4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1m3pn3pntfj99vd85gedvplrlonv96p1ea@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 167.107.191.217 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1199726717 10941 127.0.0.1 (7 Jan 2008 17:25:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:25:17 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=167.107.191.217; posting-account=TeqLlgkAAAAbHBaorcCvEC7Vn4T9q-H9 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.haskell:1067 comp.lang.python:161963 comp.lang.lisp:77136 comp.lang.ada:19259 Date: 2008-01-07T09:25:16-08:00 List-Id: On Jan 3, 1:32 am, Tim Roberts wrote: > kevin cline wrote: > > > > >As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'. Any decent > >programmer should be productive in Ada long before their security > >clearance is approved. > > That's only true because the security clearance process has become so > complicated. Ada is not a trivial language by any means. Even an > experienced C programmer is going to find enough sharp edges to send him > back to the reference manuals on a regular basis. > > >The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to > >the best and brightest. > > Bull crap. You don't HEAR about them because of that same security > clearance issue, but some of the most complicated and certainly some of the > LARGEST computing systems in the world come out of the DoD. You don't > create reliable large systems using a corral full of bright-eyed college > new hires. I didn't say anything about what the DoD built, or attempted to build. I meant that the most talented young programmers find companies like Google and Amazon or other startups more attractive than defense work. I worked at a Defense software startup in Dallas for ten years. I know how it worked. Organizations like Texas Instruments D-Seg hired a lot of new graduates, mostly from second-tier midwestern public schools, and put them to work writing defense systems. With cost-plus contracting, companies bill the DoD by the hour, making a fixed fee for each hour charged. As long as a programmer has the necessary credentials, their productivity makes no difference to the company's income. Once the contract has been won, labor saving suggestions have no value. I know of at least one case where a very talented programmer realized that several man-years of manual effort could easily be automated, but his suggestion was rejected because it would have left a dozen cut-and-paste programmers with no work. With that sort of grind-it-out project management, talented people who came to Dallas to work for TI or E-Systems didn't tend to stay in defense very long. Many were cherry-picked by the growing telecomm industry, where a talented developer could make a huge difference to the bottom line.