Re: How to Make Ada more widely used?

[alice!bs@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Bjarne Stroustrup)]

>From: sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson)
>     The impetus behind the effort that led to Ada was the DoD's conclusion
>in the 70's that the proliferation of languages being used at that time was
>a major part of the cost of DoD software.  This conclusion was based on
>studies, but I don't remember if they addressed the issue of tool costs. 
>Unfortunately, I haven't the slightest idea where you should look to find
>government documents this old or how you can request them if you know where
>to look.

For starters, look at the Ada paper for the ACM History of programming
conference (HOPL2). That paper focusses on the reasons that a single
programming language was deemed necessary and the politics needed to
design such a language and get it mandated.

Jean Isbiah was invited to write a paper on the language-technical aspects
of Ada, but unfortunately he was to busy to invest the time needed (I can
vouch that the amount of effort required to write a HOPL paper really is
very significant).