JOHN McCORMICK JUST WROTE:
>...
>There seems to be a problem matching up folks with Ada skills and folks
>that need them.  At TRI-Ada I always hear complaints about the few number
>of Ada programmers available.  From my current and past students I hear
>complaints about lack of opportunity to apply their Ada skills.  Many
>of my grads are working in C++ and would love to get back into Ada.

John's message is one of the best answers I've seen to this recurring
question about Ada programmer availability, even if it does help much
more in finding the young recent grads (surprise!) than for finding
industry veterans who learned and used Ada in the '80's and wish they
could get back to it.

His last paragraph (quoted above) nicely restates the disconnect or
matchup problem that many in the Ada community have long recognized.
Who has a good idea about what more we (Team_Ada, SIGAda, the ARA,
AdaIC, etc.) can do than provide thorough help answers like John's
when asked, and maintaining Ada jobs listings like on the SIGAda and
AdaIC websites?  These approaches can't hurt, but they don't seem to
be fundamentally changing the fact that the mismatch is big (I think
there are THOUSANDS of potential Ada job openings out there and
at least that many available training Ada programmers) and persists --
the perception of insufficient supply remains on the one side and
the perception of insufficient demand remains on the other, in general.

What do we have to do?  Do we have to take out full-page ads with url's
and names in the major newspapers in the 10 largest cities to get the
word out to both sides??  What?
                                        -- hh