Re: Computational scientists ignoring and ignored by Ada

[sarge!sarge!esther@uunet.uu.net (Esther Lumsdon)]

srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:

>    For example, one of the most heavily reused pieces of DoD R&D software
>is a program called Lowtran.  Yet not once in ten years of Ada spending has
>anyone funded its translation into Ada, which at 20,000 lines of code, 10,000
>of which are tables of propagation coefficients, would not be very expensive
>to translate into Ada.  Doing so would help promote DoD R&D software into
>Ada - if anyone really cared.

Lowtran is an interesting model.  However, you ignore the political
considerations of who in DoD-related research uses what model.  It's
impossible to make any sort of statement about 'heavy reuse' and possible
benefits of translating a model to Ada without looking at the political
considerations.  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.
-- 
-- Esther Lumsdon, not speaking for Verdix.   esther@verdix.com
"It's time to cut bait and talk turkey.  It takes 2 snakes to cross a
puddle. You have to bale hay while the tractor is warm."
  ---- either H. Ross Perot or Dave Barry