Operating systems written in Ada

Operating systems written in Ada

[alb348]

I was wondering, why is it that of the many Operating Systems written in Ada (see http://commons.ada.cx/Operating_Systems_written_in_Ada), none of them really took off? Not only that, but the average computer user has not even heard of them.
Do you envisage that a large-scale commercial or even open-source OS destined for the masses could be written in Ada, and be successful? In theory, yes, of course... but in practice?

Re: Operating systems written in Ada

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:47:04 +0100, <alb348@gmail.com> a écrit:

> I was wondering, why is it that of the many Operating Systems written in  
> Ada (see http://commons.ada.cx/Operating_Systems_written_in_Ada), none  
> of them really took off? Not only that, but the average computer user  
> has not even heard of them.
> Do you envisage that a large-scale commercial or even open-source OS  
> destined for the masses could be written in Ada, and be successful? In  
> theory, yes, of course... but in practice?

Simple: for the end user of the mass and more, an OS does not mean a  
kernel, but a platform; it requires numerous applications which are not a  
piece of cake, like browser, office suite, media authoring and rendering,  
…. Without it, a platform wont took off, and if it's not as part of such a  
platform, a kernel is unlikely to took off (except as a specific use  
kernel, but that's not any more as a kernel of a platform for the mass).


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Operating systems written in Ada

[montezf]

> Do you envisage that a large-scale commercial or even open-source OS destined for the masses could be written in Ada, and be successful? In theory, yes, of course... but in practice?

Well if we're talking about could be's I would say yes.  But not likely any time soon.  Probably the most realistic way it could happen, would be if a giant used it in such a way that it had mass appeal.  e.g. Objective-C.