From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
Subject: Ada's (in)visibility in the engineering community
Originator: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 16:44:02 GMT

Five years ago or so, I was made to listen to a drumbeat of exhortation
from various representatives of the Ada community, meaning DoD folks,
their contractors, and the compiler houses alike. These prophets told me
that no student who didn't know Ada would ever be able to get a job.

I have taught Ada since 1982, as regular readers of this group know.
The arrogance of the exhortation astounded and appalled me. In any
event, I can supply a few data points about the current state of things.

A colleague of mine did a reasonably unbiased survey of the engineering
faculty at my university. Before giving details, I remind you that
my university is located in central D.C., walking distance from the
White House and the headquarters buildings of NASA, DoE, and FAA. We
are several subway stops from the Pentagon. There is no political
correctness problem here. DoD funds much research in all our engineering
departments. We have a no-secret-research policy applying to funded
projects, but many faculty members have active consulting agreements
under which they do classified work. Most professors here are pretty
well tuned in to the local industry; it is not an ivory-tower place.

Getting back to my colleague's survey: he polled the non-Computer Science
faculty, asking them the following question:

  "In your own field, what programming languages would you like your
   students to know before they graduate?" 

He listed Ada, Basic, C, C++, Cobol, Fortran, Lisp, Pascal, PL/I, and
"other - specify". Respondents could name as many languages as they
chose. 27 professors chose to respond; they represented all the usual   
fields: electrical, civil, mechanical, environmental, operations research,
engineering management. Remember, CS faculty were left out of the survey.
The results are as follows:

  C - 20                     Dynamo - 1
  Fortran - 17               Lotus - 1
  C++ - 7                    Assembly language - 1
  Basic - 4                  Ada - 0
  Pascal - 4                 Cobol - 0
  Lisp - 3                   PL/I - 0
  Gauss - 1

Granted, this is a small sample. But the fact that 20 of 27 engineering
professors thought that C would be important to their students' careers,
and NOT ONE thought Ada would be, is amazing data. If this is the 
engineering world's impression of Ada in Washington, DC, what is the
take on Ada in the hinterland?

To me, this is yet another indicator of the Ada community's utter failure
to foster Ada's penetration into fields where its use would be quite
appropriate. The compiler prices shown in Rich Pattis' post yesterday
are only one aspect of this shameful arrogance and myopia. 

Oh - my colleague supplied me with another collection of data. He looked
through the Washington Post, Sunday, Aug. 30, in the employment ads for
programmers. The ads asked for the following knowledge (by number of
ads for each language):

  C - 85                      Sybase - 21
  Cobol - 48                  dBase - 18
  SQL - 37                    Ada - 13
  DB2 - 32                    Fortran - 13
  C++ - 30                    Informix - 13
  Oracle - 30

Well, 13 is better than 0. But this is Washington, DC, folks.

Anyone who thinks that Ada is being held back chiefly by not supporting
multiple inheritance is barking up the wrong tree. The problem is not Ada.
The problem is us, folks.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"Americans wants the fruits of patience -- and they want them now."
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