Re: My Ada Future

[Freejack <user@nospam.net>]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:47:18 -0500, Ekkehard Morgenstern wrote:


> "Andrew Carroll" <andrew@carroll-tech.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:mailman.51.1069760632.3110.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org...
>> So what does the employment market for Ada look like from your point of
>> view?  Would you recommend "going Ada" to your friends?  What are some
>> programs I can write, that you know are impressive in the Ada "market",
>> to demonstrate my skills?  Any advice to offer?  Best place to look for
>> Ada jobs?  Anyone looking for a volunteer or employee?
> 
> I'm wondering about this as well. Any advice appreciated! :-)
> 
> Ada is beginning to become my favourite programming language, and I'd
> like to know as well where I could look for an Ada job. :-)
 

Well people, the best thing to do it would seem, at this point in the
game, is to carve out our own market.

I'm typically finding that experienced Ada developers have the discipline
to outperform many of thier counterparts in the software industry. This
is also becoming evident with Eiffel and Forth developers too. Not so
much because these are "better" languages per say, but rather because
the languages have a tendency to train thier users into a more 
rigorous method of accomplishing things. Hehe. 

The unfortunate reality is that most people expect C/C++/Java/VB skills
from thier developers.

That's why I say that we need to carve out our own market. Maybe start
off simple. Replace some existing Shareware with your own that's about 10
times better than the one your replacing.
Write some critical OSS or Free Software applications which apply Ada as
the tool of choice. And polish it.
Contribute to the Ada Web Server project and AdaSockets. Work on PolyORB.
Then demo those apps to employers.

Unfortunately managers are still caught in the language du jour mindset
of the 90's. It's gonna take a bit more work to break that mold.

For what it's worth, that's my two cents.

Freejack