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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, PRICES_ARE_AFFORDABLE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,42490cad53ee37fa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: NOACE- End of the road for Ada? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:47:58 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.24.52 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1111326478 209.165.24.52 (Sun, 20 Mar 2005 05:47:58 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 05:47:58 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9636 Date: 2005-03-20T13:47:58+00:00 List-Id: adaworks@sbcglobal.net wrote: > > "The horror! The horror!" > > Richard Riehle > > I appreciate the reference to one of my favorite movies. :-) Your comments are well thought out (as usual) and I generally agree that we do see a lot of bad reasons in DoD contracts for the choices of languages. I'd depart slightly in this regard: The guys making those decisions usually are much more concerned for the overall success of a weapons system program to worry too much about what flavor of nuts and bolts are selected to go into constructing various parts involved. They're concerned above all with making sure the whole project comes in on budget, within schedule and that it passes acceptance tests meeting overall objectives. Programming language choices are so far down below the noise floor that they just trust the guys doing the job (and hold them accountable) for getting it done. Perhaps it ends up taking longer and costing more to get it right, but so long as the guys doing the job guessed right in making up the schedule, it never really surfaces. That said, I'd also suggest that its about time we just quit counting on the DoD & its contractors for the welfare of Ada. Its a huge disappointment that they've chosen to ignore & marginalize their own language, but that's what they've done and there isn't much we can do about that. They simply don't see the language as having a significant following in the "Real World" and they stack up the pluses & minuses and come to the conclusion they'd be better off going with what seems to be dominant technology in the rest of the industry. So if we quit relying on them to sustain Ada and go out there into the "Real World" and find ways of employing it in potentially new & growing technological developments, perhaps one day Ada becomes the dominant language in some field. Why don't all the Ada guys who build embedded systems think of some new device they might construct & market and use Ada as the technology going in to make the zeros and ones? Why don't all the Ada guys who build network applications think of some new and cool networking capability and go start developing the underlying implementation in Ada? Why don't the Ada guys who build financial applications think of a better way to address someone's accounting, payroll, inventory, etc. needs and build some marketable application in Ada? Enough of the tools exist already and with sufficient quality and at affordable prices that there is not much to hinder using Ada to construct some end-product. The guy who buys an automotive diagnostic computer doesn't care what language you programmed it in. The guy buying some wireless network remote control home appliance doohickie doesn't care if you programmed it in Ada. The guy streamlining his business with your automatic inventory management & ordering application doesn't care what language you programmed it in. If we build end products like this that have some commercial success, people who want to program in Ada will find jobs and compiler vendors will have customers to keep them in business. The point being that if we quit worrying about the DoD and quit thinking strictly in terms of software development tools (although it is important to have them) and START thinking in terms of "How could I deploy this technology in building a BETTER end product in my field of expertise that might have a marketable future?" we might see Ada find some productive niches and we might see more Ada jobs created. Perhaps eventually the DoD would come back and rediscover their own language. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "'Shut up,' he explained." -- Ring Lardner ======================================================================