Re: ARPA still undermining Ada

[kpriest@hopi.intel.com (Kevin Priest~)]

In article <37bph1$naq@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
[...]
>ARPA funds research, and that research uses a variety of languages for
>various purposes. 
[...]
>
>Certainly it is the case that quite a bit of the ARPA sponsored researchers
>are using C and C++. One important note here is that there are at least some
>cases I know of where those researchers would have preferred to use Ada (as
>being more suited to the task, not because it was mandated), but the lack of
>an available base technology that was freely available was a blocking
>obstacle. 

Do you remember what "base technology that was freely available" was
used by these researchers?  Based on your hope that GNAT will fill the
void for future Ada use, I infer they must have used something in the
GNU tool set, or something similar.

>
>We hope that GNAT will spread the use of Ada for research of various kinds,
>that is one of its major functions. At the same time, no one that I know of
>thinks that all advanced research should be done in Ada, or in C++ for that
>matter.
>
>Many of the ARPA people try to take a long term view, and the view I have
>often heard expressed is that languages like Ada (even Ada 9X), and C++
>(even the final version to be standardized) are languages from the past,
>and what they are interested in is technology of the future. For some
>appropriate time scale, this is very likely to be an accurate assessment!
>

I am unable to reconcile the following two positions:

1. ARPA funds research, tries to take a long term view, and is
interested in technology of the future.

2. ARPA-funded research using Ada has been hindered because there were not 
free tools available.

Why did not ARPA simply fund the purchase of Ada tools, given their
long-term view?  It seems incredibly short-sighted of a research
organization to reject a superior technical solution because they would
have to pay for the tools!  I'm sorry, Robert, but this defense of ARPA
simply doesn't wash.

--
Kevin R. Priest
kpriest@sedona.intel.com
The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Intel
Corporation (unless AMD tries to reverse engineer them).