Re: A proposal for Tri-Ada '94

[merlin@annwfn.com (Fred McCall)]

In <354omu$7ft@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu Robert Dewar writes:

>Greg, why not spend some more of YOUR OWN MONEY, which you seem quite happy
>to spend on your quest, whatever it is (assuming that for you like all of
>us, time is money), and produce your accurate number. I am sure it will
>be treated with the respect it deserves. As for me, I must not be part of
>the world, since I find I can proceed without knowing this number :-)

The problem is that Greg isn't in a position to get that number (and it
wouldn't mean a lot, even if he had it).  If anyone *really* feels that
this number is important, they should bother the program officers.
Program managers (the civilian ones) have enough to do already, and I
know we pitch these numbers (lines of code/language) every time we go
through a CDR (so the program officers should certainly have them -- and
they are used to evaluate the contract).

>Incidentally, I importantly include Case Tools, since people, especially
>at a high management level in industry and in DoD are being seduced by
>the story that Case tools eliminate the need for programming completely,
>and therefore, since there is no programming, there is no more issue of
>what programming language is being used.

I've heard that there are people who actually believe this, but I've
never seen it work for much of anything but business applications in
COBOL (and now C, I think -- I don't work on that side of the house).

>Thought for the week: how much in taxpayers money is being taken up by
>GA's postings (or anyone elses for that matter). You have to consider
>disk space on govt funded machines, traffic on govt funded networks,
>and time spent by govt funded employees (Let's me off the hook, not one
>cent of my time is paid by the government :-)

This is why I'm posting from a machine I bought on a connection I pay
for.  It's amazing how many people will try to threaten someone they
disagree with by claiming they're abusing government/company resources.
The sad thing about such threats is that they convince organizations
(managers tend to be over-reactive) to consider, or even to impose,
restrictive policies that do much toward removing a lot of the
usefulness of the net.  

[I've never had it happen in this newsgroup (or even in the comp
heirarchy), but I've been exposed to it in others.]


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
merlin@annwfn.com -- I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.