Re: Computational scientists ignoring and ignored by Ada

[world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian)]

>Some of the people who collect a copy of Lowtran do it only to compare
>Lowtran to their favorite model, so they can blast Lowtran in their
>publications.  
>
>You sound completely naive about how models really get used.

   I base my heavily used claim for Lowtran on a few things.

   1) The large number of articles I have read in Applied Optics, SPIE
      conference proceeedings, and other magazines and journals in
      which Lowtran results are displayed.  I add to this the many
      references to Lowtran in DoD technical reports available through
      DTIC.

   2) The fair amount of computer programs in my massive database of
      information on all of the government's (especially DoD) software
      that use Lowtran as an adjunct program.

   3) The fact that at least two companies have commercial versions of
      Lowtran implying there is enough demand to market and profit, to
      such an extent that the Air Force applied for and received a
      patent for the changes in the source code from Lowtran 6 to 
      Lowtran 7, in order to be able to license access to the program.

    Trust me, having examined more DoD models than anyone else on the
planet, and being able to partially measure their reuse rates, I say that
Lowtran is heavily used and would serve as a model code to be translated
to Ada to help get Ada into DoD scientific computing.  Save your naiveness
comments for the rest of the DoD reuse statements.

    Another way would be to translate BLAST into Ada, assuming you know
what it does, who has, and why it is used so much.

-- 
**************************************************************************
 Greg Aharonian                                      srctran@world.std.com
 Source Translation & Optimization                            617-489-3727
 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178