[GAP] Regarding Cyril's Reply to My Rant

[Riehle, Richard (CIV)]

Ted,

Thanks.  Martin informs me that Ada is on the way out at the
USAF Academy.   

I wonder whether anyone has some good ideas about how to get Ada
back into the curriculum.   Most of our computer science department
colleagues seem to be opposed to including it.  

I just had lunch with a representative of a major DoD contractor who 
said that they are continuing to move away from Ada toward Java and
C++.   He was genuinely suprised to learn that anyone was starting 
new projects in Ada.   

It is important that we find some strategy for keeping Ada in the 
curriculum at our universities.   The professors need to understand
its importance as a software engineering tool, and persuade students
to appreciate its value as a powerful language for building reliable
software systems.

My question is still open.   What schools are still teaching Ada? Do
those schools intend to continue teaching Ada?   Is the inclusion of
Ada the passion of a single professor against the rest of the computer
science department, or is it a deparment-wide decision?   In the case
of Ted Baker and myself, a little bit of Ada is still being taught due
to the work of one person.

Richard Riehle

-----Original Message-----
From: gap-bounces at gnat.info [mailto:gap-bounces at gnat.info] On Behalf Of
Ted Baker
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 1:23 PM
To: GNAT Academic Program discussion list
Subject: Re: [GAP] Regarding Cyril's Reply to My Rant

Question:

> "I wonder whether any other educational institutions are still
teaching
> Ada."

Partial Answer.

Here at FSU we have no regular course in Ada.  However, I've
managed to push Ada into our Programming Languages class the last
two times I taught it (this year and 2005), but I only succeed at
the expense of a few more negative student surveys at the end of
the term (e.g., "Why don't we learn a language that is widely
used, like [fill in the blank with Java, Perl, C#, etc.]?", "Ada
is too much to learn in a few weeks.)  I feel pretty sure I could
raise my teaching evaluation a notch or two if I gave up on this
and followed the trend, and maybe replaced Ada in the course by
one of the scripting languages, say Ruby or Python.  I just
persist out of some kind of stubbornness.

It is true that we don't have much time to learn Ada.  For a
project this term, the students are translating a tiny Prolog
intepreter from Scheme into Ada.  In the same
term, they learn enough Scheme and Prolog to do a little
programming, as well as basic parsing (LL(1) & recursive decent)
and translation (attributed grammars), and also basic proofs using
precondition-postcondition semantics.  I gave them a bunch of
Ada code to get started, including a package that implements 
LISP list structures (controlled, with reference counts), to
save time, but it still quite a stretch.  There is certainly
no time for multi-tasking or for the niceties of generics,
class hierarchies, streams, etc.

--Ted

On Thu, Nov 08, 2007 at 11:58:23AM -0800, Riehle, Richard (CIV) wrote:
> Cyril,
> 
> I guess I missed the Ada edition of Crosstalk.
> 
> You are closer to the ground with regard to new initiatives
> that are using Ada.  I am happy to hear that you see more
> happening than seems apparent from my vantage point.
> 
> The DoD projects that I see coming through here seem to be
> Ada-averse.   That is, even the mention of Ada is greeted with
> either skepticism or amused tolerance.   It is impossible to
> get funding for a research project that involves Ada.  All
> the funding agencies want to hear about is Java or, to a 
> lesser degree, C++.   
> 
> I'm sure you know that I have been a long-time supporter and
> advocate of Ada, and I am quite aware of its benefits when 
> compared to other languages.   In fact, if it were not for my
> advocacy, Ada would be completely absent from any aspect of the
> NPS computer science curriculum.  As it is, the language is barely
> visible at this school.  The speech I mentioned from the Navy 
> Admiral did nothing to help with Ada's credibility here.
> 
> What articles have been published besides the Crosstalk issue?  Has
> there been an article in Federal Computer Week?   Where else?  As you
> know, I once had an Ada column in JOOP, but magazine is now gone.  
> 
> My current teaching and research projects have made it difficult for
> me to keep active in the world of Ada for the past several years.
Since
> the school is focused on C++ and Java, my attention has had to be 
> diverted to projects that use those languages.   I would like to
return
> Ada to a respected language here.
> 
> When I first came to NPS, several professors told me that Ada was a
dead
> language.  In 2001, one professor told me that, "In five years you
won't
> be able to get an Ada compiler."  That, of course, was false then and
is
> false today.   However, it reflects a widespread attitude -- one that
I
> confront every time I try to introduce Ada into the conversation.
> 
> I recently offered a course that is already in the course catalog,
"Ada
> As a Second Language."   There were no takers.  No one signed up for
it.
> Some of my professorial colleagues continue to tell students that Ada
is
> a waste of their time.  
> 
> I once published an article in Embedded Systems Magazine titled, "Ada
> in Space."  That article was read and discussed by a larger audience
> than the readership of Embedded Systems Magazine.  It would be great
> to see some articles written, not about Ada, but about the successful
> projects that use Ada.  The editor of Dr. Dobbs once told me he would
> welcome such articles, but that he was not interested in articles that
> simply described features of the language.   More case history
articles
> that involve Ada would be a powerful approach to improving its image.
> 
> Meanwhile, my plan is to eventually update my book "Ada Distilled" to 
> include the new features of Ada 2005.   The fact is that no book
> publisher
> will publish a book on Ada these days, so I will continue to make
> available
> on the Web when it is finished.   
> 
> >From where you sit, Ada may seem to be making great strides, but from
> where
> I sit, right in the middle of a DoD organization, Ada seems a remote
and
> 
> quaint niche language that is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day
> decision
> process.   From the perspective of book publishers, Ada seems to have
no
> economic viability.   
> 
> >From my own view, Ada continues to be the most appropriate language
for 
> the creation of DoD weapon systems and civilian safety-critical
> software.
> I still support, advocate for, and encourage the use of Ada.
However,
> it
> is not easy being the "voice in the wilderness" among colleagues who
> generally deprecate Ada.    I will keep Ada in that part of the
> curriculum
> over which I have influence.  Once I am gone from NPS, Ada will also
be
> gone -- unless I can find some way to bring it back to life before I
> leave.
> 
> I wonder whether any other educational institutions are still teaching
> Ada.
> I know the USAF Academy and USMA at West Point continue to teach it.
> The
> US Naval Academy offers a little bit of Ada, but not the way it used
to.
> Are there U.S, civilian schools, other than Dr. McCormick's school,
> where Ada is taught openly and without embarrassment?  
> 
> Tnanks for your reply to my earlier rant.  I think we need to have
this
> discussion.  As usual, I am not taking a popular position, but I hope
> that
> I am still among friends.
> 
> Richard  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gap-bounces at gnat.info [mailto:gap-bounces at gnat.info] On Behalf
Of
> Cyrille Comar
> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 1:34 AM
> To: GNAT Academic Program discussion list
> Subject: Re: [GAP] Binding Problem with GNAT
> 
> Riehle, Richard (CIV) wrote:
> 
> Richard,
> 
> I understand your frustration but I must admit being a bit surprized
by 
> some of your claims since they contradict very much our own
experience. 
> You seem to be describing the events of the end of the 90's. Not what
is
> 
> happening at the end of the 2000's. We see a clear new interest in Ada

> coming from a community that did not necessarily follow all the past 
> history of the language and don't even know Ada 83. The interest comes

> from the fact that Ada provides a solution to many problems that are 
> still not solved adequately by other languages/environments. 
> Furthermore, the Ada compilation technology is now much more mature
and 
> proven-in-use than potential alternative solutions.
> 
> > So far, no one has written an article for widespread publication
> > announcing the advent of Ada 2005.   I have not even seen such an
> > article in Crosstalk. 
> 
> You seem to have missed the August 2006 edition that is dedicated 
> exclusively to Ada 2005!
> 
>   There is never any mention of Ada in any
> > of the DoD publications.  Not every Federal Computer Week has had
> > an announcement, as far as I know.
> 
> here again that does not correspond to my experience. We must be
reading
> 
> different publications... ;-)
> 
> > Sorry for the rant.  
> 
> It is good to rant sometimes... but I felt compelled to answer since 
> your ranting is clearly not representative of the current situation.
> 
> Ada is both a very modern and experienced language. It is true that it

> is mostly popular in the software niche where quality and reliability 
> are real requirements. A lot of the software industry privileges short

> time-to-market at the expense of quality & reliability and this is not

> the preferred area for Ada.
> 
>   It is also true that the programming language per se is not a major 
> focus of the software engineering community anymore. It is only an
issue
> 
> for a small part of the software development cycle...
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