Re: employment with ada

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

We can all say "I think this is the wrong decision made for the wrong
reasons", but that doesn't really help change the situation. When the bulk
of the world that is doing embedded programming (such as what is on the JSF)
is doing it in C or C++ it gets *really* hard for the decision makers in
LMCO and elsewhere to spit into the wind and say "I'll risk this billion
dollar project, the 30 year future of the aircraft and my professional
career on a language that is being widely ignored by my counterparts in the
private sector..."

The way to get Ada into things like the JSF is to eliminate the objections
that get raised. Whether it is accurate or not to say that no universities
are teaching Ada doesn't really matter. It *is* accurate to say that the
overwhelming bulk of universities are using something other than Ada for
most of their courses. It may not be accurate to say that there are no Ada
programmers out there or Ada vendors out there or Ada jobs out there, but it
*is* accurate to say that there are lots more C/C++ programmers, vendors and
jobs out there. And its not like its even a horse race. In real time,
embedded work Ada is almost not even above the noise level.

The way to fix that is to concentrate on building Ada software in areas
where there is less to worry about with respect to long term support.
Sideline projects, hacker work, entrepreneurial endeavors, "free" software,
etc. Get it in use in everyday fields and then the big-ticket projects won't
have so much objection. Build some of the things we see every day in Ada and
that will create jobs. (An office suite? An accounting package? A web
browser? Desktop utilities? A database? What do you see running on your
computer right now?)

If there are improvements in Ada that give it more leverage - such as
libraries, a standard GUI, a database, etc. - it makes it more attractive to
develop everyday applications in it. If we use Ada for more of these sorts
of things, it will start building that necessary base to insure its future.
Otherwise, the LMCO guys are making the right decision.

MDC



Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3EB415CB.6D97B14D@adaworks.com...
>
> It is interesting  to me that, as I see DoD contractors making the error
> of moving away from Ada toward inferior technologies, non-DoD
> organizations are discovering its benefits (some of them are not
> in the U.S.) and enjoying success with it.   This is one more example
> of the old phrase, "grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory."
>


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

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