Re: Future with Ada

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

Michael Card wrote:

> RE: Richard's & Ben's comments about a shortage of ada programmers:

Some readers might be interested in this story.

On Friday, one of my former students, a Naval officer, dropped by my office
for a few minutes.   He is now with the Fleet as an EDO (engineering duty
officer).   In the Ada class he took, we studied several options for creating
GUI applications using GtkAda, CLAW, and JEWL, among others.   His
reason for dropping by was to let me know he has had the opportunity to
write a lot of small applications at his current duty station using Ada.

If you are paying attention, John English, he found your JEWL packages
easy to use and at the right level of simplicity for what he needed to do.
I have suggested to him that he acquire a copy of CLAW for doing more
robust applications, and I think he will look into getting funds for a CLAW
license.

He is one of those very bright officers who will, if he has his way, infect
the rest of his organization with a zeal for Ada.   The problem he will
face is the naysayers who outrank him and know little about the value
of Ada -- those who still believe Java is such a great idea, for example.

Richard Riehle