People, events, and technology insertion in the Ada program
Authors: Robert Mathis
Venue: Proceedings of the conference on TRI-ADA '90 (1990)

There are three components of the Ada program that I want to mention in this panel - dedicated people, major milestone events, and technology insertion. Ada is succeeding because of the participation, hard work, and enthusiastic support by many hundreds of dedicated professionals. During the time I was associated with the AJPO, I had the very good fortune to work with some outstanding computer scientists in the AJPO itself, including Larry Druffel (Air Force and OSD), Pete Fonash and Dick Stanley (Army), Vance Mall and Al Kopp (Air Force), and Jack Kramer and Brian Schaar (Navy). We were supported by some excellent people in other parts of the government, including Richard DeLauer, Edith Martin, Mark Grove, Ed Lieblein, Joe Batz, Kevin McMannus, and June Ludwig (OSD), Virginia Castor and Chris Anderson (Air Force), Paul Cohen (DCA), John Duke (DlA), and Tricia Oberndorf and Gil Myers (Navy). There were also some outstanding contractors including Jean lchbiah (Alsys), Lee Bauman, Patti Pennington, and lnara Gravitis (SAIC), John Goodenough (Softech), Robert Dewar, Ed Schonberg, and Gerry Fisher (NYU), Tom Probert, Bob Knapper, and Cathy McDonald (IDA), Sam Redwine and Rebecca Bowerman (Mitre), and Barry Watson (IITRI). I was also Director of STARS and was assisted there by many of the already named people and Carol Morgan (Navy), John Leary (Air Force), Bill Riddle (IDA), and Rich DeMillo (GA Tech). There were also numerous other helpers in the Services and Defense Agencies, defense contractors, and the members of ACM/SIGAda and JUG. I am pleased with my role in encouraging users groups and meetings independent of government sponsorship and control. I was active in the Ada implementers group and AdaTech before I went to AJPO and I have continued my support for SlGAda and AdaEurope after leaving. In fact in many ways I never felt like a government insider. The other people on this panel all had DoD jobs before they became involved with Ada. My only government job was the one that got me on this panel. I think the strength of Ada comes from its support outside of DOD. This was part of the original plan and it has worked. Support of the Ada program by dedicated professionals is needed now more than ever. I have participated in many Ada conferences and separate talks. Some of those were on technical topics or specific activities like the international standards working group on Ada. But while I was Director of AJPO my talks all had one purpose, and that is the same purpose that brings my participation in this panel - l want people to go home and use Ada more. When I joined AJPO we had a charter with a lot of tasks, most of which I have forgotten, but the first was to &ldquo;promote the use of Ada.&rdquo; I interpreted this as our top priority. In retrospect I still think it was our top priority and I wish I had been able to do it better. Ada has become an accepted programming language, but that should have happened sooner and been more widespread. Since I left the AJPO the pace of Ada introduction and use has accelerated greatly. We used to list validated compilers on a single overhead, now it takes more than twenty two-column, fine print pages. We used to work one-on-one with prospective users, now the AJPO has a database so large that it took more than a dozen double-column pages to list little more than just an explanation of the project titles. Ada conferences used to have papers about the possibility of using Ada in different domains, now we have papers documenting cost savings through reuse and improved quality on fourth and fifth systems in a company. The continuing, effective work of dedicated professionals using Ada to improve software engineering practice is impressive. Ada has made it, not as soon as I had hoped, but it is now firmly established. It may turn out to be as popular as COBOL. But there is still a lot of work to be done in promoting the use of Ada and getting advanced software engineering technologies into use in American companies. I'm still leading the international standards working group on Ada and working hard in my own company to promote improved software engineering practices. I know others are doing the same in their own situations. We draw strength from each other's efforts. So let's keep doing it. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player