Michael Feldman wrote: > No problem here, but I do think that when you introduce the panel, > you ought (for the benefit of first-time attendees) to explain just > what the "mandate" was and was not. Let's work at stifling any > further proliferation of the myths. Well, "mandate" may be associated with villification, but I still disagree that there's a significant difference here. I think the fact that Ada was "required" by the DoD had the same negative effect, or would have had it even if the word "mandate" had never been mentioned in our context. The Myth of must-be-bad-because-... was because Ada was forced on people, not because of the spelling of the verb or noun. "Forced" and "DoD" both were and are bad associations to many. Lotsa people felt Ada was being pushed down their throats and therefore that it had to be because of politics, not technical merit. They would have felt the same whether they were told it was "required" or it was "mandated" -- and, the fundamental guilt-by-association would have happened no matter which word. It's the natural "hacker" reaction to being disciplined and constrained -- "I don't like to be forced to do anything; let me totally figure out how to do it." A lot of the same people who resist(ed) Ada in industry also equally resist doing formal design, doing documentation, doing testing right, coming honest with QA, and other 2167-culture practices, and I don't think "mandate" was never used for those practices. But, I'll agree to disagree and let this thread die. --hh