[GAP] Use of Ada 2005

[Riehle, Richard (CIV)]

Erhard,

Thanks for the counsel.  We exclusively a graduate school
with students working on either an M.S. or a PhD.  Many
students come to us with some programming language already.
Still, we do teach courses in programming languages.  

As a DoD-sponsored graduate school, many of the professors
remember how Ada was "shoved down" their throats during the
age of the mandate.  One Admiral gave a presentation shortly
after I arrive here six years ago in which he lamented the
entire Ada experience as the hopeless attempt to introduce
an inadequate technology into the DoD.   In his opinion, it
was impossible to teach the language in any useful way, and
the language was fundamentally useless for real software.  

His influence, and that of others in high places is not yet
gone.  Such pronouncements, while misinformed and irresponsible,
have resulted in a residue of ill-will toward Ada among many
otherwise intelligent people.  

All I can do is continue to introduce it to the students in
a responsible way, provide clarity and understanding, and help
them understand where it is a valuable tool for software development
It is intersting that many students learn to like the language
from my class and ask why more people don't use it.   Some have
tried to use it for their thesis work and have had professors on
their committee demand that they use some other language.

You are right about Java.  It is now our first language
here at NPS.  One of our graduate programs is exclusively
C++, and that will never change.   

There are things that would help make it more acceptable.  One of
our most popular thesis tracks here at NPS is our wireless track. 
There is currrently no Ada compiler that targets any of the PDA's
such as the Palm, and Ada is not available for a lot of other wireless
environments.   If it were, we might be able to persuade some of
the students in the wireless track to use Ada for their thesis work.

We receive funding from various agencies for research.  Some of these
agencies refuse to fund any research that involves Ada since, in their
view, Ada is no longer used by the DoD.   It is an uphill battle to
get them to understand that Secretary Paige's memo abrogating the
mandate did not prohibit the use of Ada.   Rather, he was encouraging
its use while opening the door to the use of other languages.  This
misinterpretation of Paige's memo has caused a lot of problems for
those who wish to use Ada for DoD projects.   

So, I can only hope that those students who leave my classroom with
a positive attitude toward Ada (with a maximum of 18 hours exposure
to it, plus lab assignments) can make a difference in the future.

By the way, I have found that Johh English's JEWL package has been
a great help in making Ada attractive in this brief exposure.  The
students love that they can write simple Windows programs and that
has made a difference in Ada's accpetance here.

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: gap-bounces at gnat.info [mailto:gap-bounces at gnat.info] On Behalf Of
Erhard Ploedereder
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 9:56 AM
To: gap at gnat.info
Cc: gap at gnat.info
Subject: Re: [GAP] Use of Ada 2005


Richard,

I have found more friends for Ada since I stopped insisting on it and
offered to listen to arguments.

The choice of C++/C is simply abhorrent to enough collegues that
it won't happen in places that are not driven by industry short-term 
demands. Functional languages and derivatives are nice, but dead in
industry and education. 

The "enemy" in education is Java. And it's a tough one. 
Performance and a lousy real-time model are its weak spots.

Erhard 
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