Re: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> As far as rewriting BIND, why must you be critical of that.

I am not critical about rewriting BIND in Ada.
I think it's a great idea, because it would serve
as a nice showcase for Ada's features. I was being
critical about people who say that it should be
rewritten simply because it is now written in C.

Now, will this actually happen? Well, we'll see.

> you are either hostile to Ada or you think what
 > we already have is "good enough"

Neither. I am merely hostile to claims of how much
better this program would be in Ada, if only someone
would write it. I am also hostile to claims that C++
can be chosen only through stupidity.

> And sometimes very unhappily...
> How productive is it keeping your virus signatures up...

Cars overheat, break down, get flat tires, wear out,
need to be inspected, and need parts replaced. They
have assorted design flaws that result in numerous
recalls for repairs. That does not prevent millions
of people from productively using them, and indeed
loving them.

As I keep saying, you cannot use vaporware as evidence
for the superiority of your chosen language. Any version
of Windows, no matter how error prone, is superior to the
most perfect AdaOS if that doesn't exist.

You keep saying - see this system written in C, look at its
flaws. I say - show me a similar system written in Ada that
lacks those flaws.

> Everyone is concious of this fact (at least as far as
> operating systems go). Hence the reason for "pining for
> something to point to." ;-)

I may be wrong, but even GNAT seems to serve as a counterexample.
Every time someone breathes on the underlying GCC, it seems that
GNAT stops working with it.

> Was I "hectoring"? I thought I responding to some points and
 > counter-claims.

Not you in particular. Just the general attitude here.