Re: Meridian AdaStudent

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman)]

In article <1584@blackbird.afit.af.mil> pvarner@blackbird.afit.af.mil (Paul A. Varner) writes:
>To whomever can help me:
>  I am thinking of buying the Merdian Ada Student compiler and I was 
>wondering how limited of an Ada compiler it is.  I don't plan on using it
>for heavy development work, but more for exploring the Ada language. 
>Please E-mail your responses and I will summarize and post if there is
>enough interest.  Thanks in advance.
Many of my students have purchased AdaStudent and been quite happy with it.
It is a full implementation of Ada with a few exceptions, necessary to give
Meridian a way to differentiate it from the expensive version. To summarize:

- chapter 13 support is not there, so you can't explore rep-specs, interrupt
  entries, and the like. This is an interestng part of the language, but
  there's a lot of Ada to explore without it. Until recently, many "full"
  compilers didn't do chapter 13 very well, either.

- there is a limit on the number of libraries (other than the "normal"
  user's own Ada library). This is an inoffensive restriction, as there is
  no real limitation on the size of your own library. I think you can
  link to 1 or 2 additional ones; I would be more definitive if I could find
  my documentation in my messy office.

- they have not (yet) implemented their version 4 runtime system in AdaStudent.
  This means that tasking is run-till-blocked, not pre-emptive. I don't have
  a clear answer on whether Meridian will implement it or not. I imagine they
  will, as it's less expensive for them to maintain one version than two.

- Tasking and generics, and everything else not mentioned, is fully implemented.  The compiler appears to be the full one, stripped down as above. Because
  of the stripping, it is not validatable.

IMHO, AdaStudent is a good investment of $50.00; the next step up is
AdaGraduate, which is $495. For your $50.00, you get a serviceable and
sufficiently fast compiler, binder, and debugger, which should carry you
a long way in exploring the language. I don't usually write public reviews
of compilers (versions change too fast) but I think AdaStudent is a very
good deal.

If you want to spring some more money, ($249. I think), you might consider
Academic IntegrAda from AETech. It is a Janus/Ada compiler with a Turbo-like
development environment wrapped around it. Also some useful DOS libraries.
I am using it to develop lots of little Ada programs for a book. I'm
pretty happy with it overall. Either package is worthwhile. In my opinion,
if Meridian had an environment like IntegrAda, it would really be dynamite.
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Prof. Michael Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
+1-202-994-5253
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
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