Re: Future with Ada

[Michal Nowak <vinnie@inetia.pl>]

On 01-12-01 at 10:43 Richard Riehle wrote:

>Over and over, we encounter companies who, after deciding to use Ada for
>its technological advantages, cannot hire qualified Ada programmers.  Our
>most recent experience was a company in Silicon Valley.  They were excited
>about using Ada, asked us to train some of the people, and then tried to hire
>more programmers to do Ada.   They found it nearly impossible to find
>people with experience in their domain,  sufficient mathematics, and lots
>of experience in Ada.   Sadly, they finally decided to use C++ because it
>was so much easier to find programmers.

The problem may be about word 'experience'. If Ada is not used widely enough,
gaining exeprience is almost impossible. When I browsed job postings at AdaIC,
most of them required 2, 5 or even 10 or 15 years of experience.
Where to get it? If companies do not have places for inexperienced programmers,
in some time they will not find exeperienced. And than there will be
no Ada...:-((

>They do care about being able to hire people who want
>to program in Ada.
>
>One can dismiss this as a "chicken and egg" problem.  However, it is a
>problem that needs solving.

One of the way to start are universities. Most programmers have
CS background (or are required to have). That requires of course, the
lecturers are aware of what Ada is. It can't be like that student makes
advices to lecturer. However it is easy to get to know all features about
Ada, but...  ...money play some role here.
What are doing big companies like Micro$oft or Oracle? They make some kind
of sponsoring to universities. As I know, Oracle invested some funds in
my university so on labs we got Oracle Developer, Designer, Oracle Databases,
etc. On another one, MS gave their operating systems and their tools (Office,
MS Money, etc.), so students are performing all analysis on their software.
Maybe some program like "Ada goes to university" or something, maybe try
this way...There are students, who are likely to learn something new,
but they are not aware about Ada.


>We
>need to raise the visibility of Ada in the media, and among our non-Ada
>colleagues.
>
>At present, no one is making any effective effort to make Ada visible and
>attactive to the larger software community.

Maybe use computer magazines. They often are sold with accompanied CDs.
Write some article about Ada, about all these good features, ask the
publihers to put for example GNAT and some tutorials on CD to enable
readers quick start. Such magazines are also read by students, this
should enable them at least became aware about Ada.

Borland (it is now Inprise as I know), was doing interesting promotions
using such magazines (at least in Poland). When they were releasing
new version of their compiler (i.e. Delphi 5.0), they put on CD
trial version of it, but also fully fuctionable, legal copy of some
earlier varsion of this compiler (i.e. Delphi 2.0), for non-commercial
use. There was possibiliy to buy a license for creating commercial
software with this product, for very inexpensive price (about 40 $).

I know that it is harder to promote a programming language than a
specialized software. But if companies wolud not have possibility to
find Ada programmers, they will stop to buying Ada compilers. And
than...

>As a technology, I believe Ada is still a better choice for many software
>domains.

So do I.

Mike
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