> Michael Pickett said:
>
> >  but sadly, these people are coders who have used Ada. ...

And in a followon
>
> ...  prevents
> them from making errors.  They obviously had no understanding of the
> spirit of the language, or the s/w engineering concepts which it
> embodies: instead, they were trying to use the same coding style they
> had used in the past, as though Ada really were "just another language"
> - and complaining that the language would not let them use the dirty
> tricks they were accustomed to.
>
     ....
>
> Is the problem really that there are too few programmers on the market
> who are software engineers  (regardless of whether or not they claim to
> be such, or what language they use) rather than hackers - and that this
> shows up more clearly when using Ada rather than C or C++ ?  It seems to
> me, from what I have seen, that C++ very much appeals to the mindset of
> quick & dirty programming, clever tricks and complexity simply for its
> own sake which came from the C community.  I find it perfectly possible
> to produce good code in C - because I write it as though I were writing
> Ada!
>
>        Richard Stuckey
>
I was an a very early SIGAda meeting where Larry Druffel (who was them
head of the AJPO)  was asked (I paraphrase from memory):

   Ada seems to be a complex language.  Do you think people will have
   trouble learning Ada?

Druffel thought for about 30 seconds, and then responded:

   No
      (pause 10 seonds)
   People with have trouble learning Software Engineering.
   Software Enginners will have no problem leaning Ada.

..Paul Stachour