libraries for Ada (was): periodicity

["Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com>]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:
> > How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> > or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> > focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> > and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  
 
> Good point, what do you have to propose as component, library... ?

I suspect each person's choices would be colored by their needs, and I
_know_ I am going to regret getting into this, and I'm _sure_ I'll hear
"but that already exists as (obscure, non-standard hobbiest) library X",
but for starters:

Ports of the IMSL math and statistics libraries.

Libraries of accessor/mapping routines to the various popular kinds of
close coupled, high bandwidth, low per processor capability massively
parallel processors, and same-named adapters for doing the exact same
problems where the underlying hardware is a network of slow
communicating, high capability computers (like SETI at Home).

Pretty much all of Java, most importantly in the Java style of being
well integrated and astonishingly well documented, but compiled instead
of byte-compiled, so that for example students can just sit down and
build GUIed applications using the Ada language "right out of the box".

A (heavy emphasis here, contrasting to the partial implementation of GKS
some years ago in Ada) _full_ implementation of PHIGS or of a freely
licensed RENDERMAN or some similar high tech graphics library, for
photo-realistic animated rendering.  Similarly for animation.

All of the algorithms published as the Graphics Gems series.

A standard set of graph tools for trees, graphs, digraphs, et cetera,
and all the usual operations on them.

A knowledge engineering library with support for the standard knowledge
capture paradigms and structures.

High technology text and word processing component libraries.

Data presentation libraries.

Data mining and indexing component libraries.

Evolutionary algorithms and neural network component libraries.  (I'd be
more than happy to port my recent algorithm inventions here to Ada and
contribute them.)

Data base functionality tightly couple to the Ada language but
supporting e.g. SQL standard protocols.

A game-writing toolkit.  Arguably, in terms of gaining wider acceptance
for Ada, this should be the top priority, as it would attract a crowd of
students and individual freelance programmers, exactly the crowd that
made C a success outside of its original laboratory environment.

Financial management, planning, and estimating tool kits.  Stock market
predicting components (might as well throw in snake oil, it keeps the
snakes well oiled, why not the rest of us?)

Network programming, Web search, and Web presentation technology
libraries.

Essentially, one could take all of the various ACM and IEEE computer
oriented proceedings, start at volume 1 number 1 of each, and work
forward, adding each published algorithm to a library, while
regularizing data representations and such to make the libraries
interoperable.

Lots of other people would have longer, more practical lists.

The points that get buried in list making are that there needs to be a
start, that it needs to be organized, that it needs some hope of
longevity via a sponsor that is more trustworthy than, for example, the
US Military's defunct Ada Mandate, it needs a home from which it will be
accessible, like the WUSTL archives, it needs librarians and indexers
and master programmers to keep it well organized and easy to search for
needed tools, it needs a proofing and filtering input stage where the
community can make contributions and know that they won't just
disappear.

xanthian, "duck and cover" time.

[Did I mention "free"?  It is pretty pointless to price oneself out of
the market when trying to foment a revolution, as Sun does by putting
license fees on commercial use of Java, essentially preventing the
hobbiest from doing a slow transition to commercial success by putting a
huge "first step barrier" in front of the first commercial sale of a
Java product.  Sun got confused about its main goal: preventing
Microsoft from putting Sun out of business by making the OS unimportant
again, and got greedy just when a chance of success was looming large.]


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG