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From: rracine@draper.com (Roger Racine)
Subject: Re: A question for my personal knowledge.
Date: 1999/05/12
Message-ID: <rracine.16.0007B449@draper.com>#1/1
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References: <1VEZ2.1515$I51.88140@carnaval.risq.qc.ca>
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Organization: Draper Laboratory
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-05-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>I hear this argument all the time - "Nobody wants to switch to language
>X because training/education/infrastructure/whatever is too expensive."
>This ends up absurd on the face of it. Stick "Java" in where "X" appears
>above. Apparently people were willing to eat the costs - large or small
>or whatever they really are - in order to get the perceived benefits of
>the new language. This *must* be true or we'd all still be programming
>in assembler.

>I think it ends up coming down to this: "I find language X interesting.
>Hence, I will acquire the resources and start developing in X." versus
>"I hate language Y and someone is encouraging/forcing me to adopt it.
>Hence, language Y will cost too much, take too long, introduce too many
>risks, make it impossible for me to get qualified staff, blah, blah,
>blah." 

There is also the "sqeaky wheel" issue.  There are a few very vocal opponents 
of Ada.  There are fewer (especially in percentages) vocal opponents of C, 
etc.  It is much easier for a manager to say "I do not want to lose this 
employee, so we will do it in that person's favorite language".  

We recently had a former employee come back for a job interview.  He 
specifically said that he would not come back to an Ada job.  There are many
who think it is a blot on their resume to have their current job something 
that is "not marketable", like Ada.  These are (otherwise) very intelligent 
people.

Roger Racine