At 10:48 AM 7/18/97 -0400, (No Name Available) wrote:

>       Assuming our personnel selection is imperfect, what are the
>        statistics regarding our likelihood of getting competent
>        software engineers if we choose only those experienced
>        in C vs only those experienced in Ada.

    You will be selecting from the same set, won't you?  I can't imagine a
"true" software engineer, as opposed to one who has that title on his
resume', that won't be experienced in at least Ada, C, Fortran, Cobol, sh,
csh, and html.  Most will also be competant in several dozen more
languages, including a couple Lisp dialects, SQL, Visual BASIC, and several
C++ variants.

    Choosing C experts vs. Ada experts, you run into a different phenomena.
 It takes a lot more language specific learning to be a C expert, and a lot
more software engineering background to qualify as an Ada expert.  (And if
you want to be a real Ada 95 expert, a LOT of OO design experience.)

    So it is easier to retread existing software engineers as Ada experts,
than to make Ada experts into C experts, or C experts into software engineers.

    (It is also a lot easier to find self-proclaimed C++ programmers than
it is to find software engineers that both have used C++ on a significant
project and are willing to use it again.  But that is another subject. ;-)



                                        Robert I. Eachus

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