Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

[rod.chapman@praxis-cs.co.uk (Rod Chapman)]

"Richard  Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<oLwuc.17575$be.14510@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...

> As to other universities, there is currently no incentive for professors to
> carry out
> any kind of research that might favor Ada.   The scholarly journals prefer
> contributions
> that avoid Ada,  the textbook publishers edit out excessive references to
> Ada, and
> the DoD is not funding any Ada research projects anymore.

Richard and others,
  We have recently been rather successful (by our own modest
standards)
at getting Ada into University programmes...How?  The answer is
simple: SPARK!

 SPARK offers faculty some really interesting stuff to play with:
design-by-contract, program proof, static analysis, hard real-time,
embedded etc. etc.  Secondly, the professional toolset is free (as
in no dollars) to university faculty.

Off the top of my head, the following US
institutions have taught SPARK on advanced courses in the last 
couple of years: NYU, Northern Iowa, Virginia, JMU, Oakland,
USAFA, and NPGS.  Not a bad start.  Several others use SPARK in
research: MIT springs to mind, plus York, Birmingham, Heriot-Watt
in the UK.

 There's also a pretty darn good textbook about SPARK, which 
helps. :-)  

 At SIGCSE this year, the SIGAda and ARA people were cleaned out
of SPARK book samplers and CDROMs - we sent over 50 sets and
could have probably shifted double that.  We have subsequently
been contacted by other authors who want to include SPARK
in next editions of their programming languages textbook.
Not a bad sign.

 As for publications, we have some success - IEEE Transactions on SE,
IEEE Software, CrossTalk (a DoD sponsored journal!) hardly seem
like small-fry.  Heriot-Watt's current work on automated
proof is appearing in significant conferences and (soon) 
journals.

 Finally, the _really_ great thing about SPARK is that you can
tell your conference program committee, journal referees, and
board of studies all about it, WITHOUT MENTIONING THAT IT'S Ada!
(at least not until the light-bulb has gone on and people have
realised
how great it is...)  This really does work - honest.

 So here's a challenge for the Ada community: get SPARK into
your local university CS program, without telling 'em
it's Ada.  Go ahead - you know you want to!  When someone
asks what the language is like, tell 'em it's hard-real-time-
Eiffel-on-steroids.  When someone asks which compiler you use,
tell 'em "GCC of course"...go on give it a go - Praxis will
support your efforts...

 - Rod, SPARK Team