HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

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On Thu, 3 Jun 1993, Gregory Aharonian posted to All:

GA. Second, market and evangelize the language.  

Ah, but who is going to do this evangelizing?  Certainly not the DOD and
it does not appear that the vendors are willing to do so...

GA. And to beat a dead horse, Ada will remain a dead, niche language as
  . long as IBM refuses to give it as much attention as it does C++ and
  . Smalltalk.

Alas, I do not honestly believe that IBM has any influence on the common
acceptance of any language.  Of course, if they were to bundle an Ada
compiler (even GNAT) in with OS/2 like DOS has BASIC, then there might
be a small change...

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
           

HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

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On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Michael Feldman posted to All:

MF. Meridian makes a small profit selling their compilers to students, at
  . onesies retail prices of $99-199, depending on features. I don't think
  . Meridian has tested the elasticity in dropping their commercial prices to,
  . or slightly above, student levels, which would put them in direct
  . competition with Borland products, and certainly with the high-end
  . "professional" C-family compilers.

I believe that they did once test the elasticity of pricing on their Mac
product ($99) and managed to move very few compilers.  I am not certain
whether this is because of the product, the interface, the marketing or
the fact that quiche eaters (Mac users) do not use Ada...  [Oh, is this
going to bring on the flames...]

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . Mommy, what does "FORMATTING DRIVE C:" mean?
                                                                               
                                                

HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

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On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Bill Lee posted to All:

  . for something other than the "large" developments is the lack of
  . readily available interfaces to the kind of things you need for
  . writing programs: portable, standard interfaces to the underlying
  . operating system.

Hear, hear...  A project I am working on is not using Ada for a major
portion, just because of the lack of a portable GUI library.  The GUI
library must be portable across DOS, MS Windows, Motif, and Mac.  The
major GUI builders don't support Ada and the Ada GUI builders all seem
to be focussed on Eunuchs...  I do not consider cross-platform portable
to mean Sun Unix, HP Unix, SG Unix...

I spoke with XVT, the builder we are now using, a number of times about
an Ada binding and their response was that there was just not enough of
a market.  Of course, Windon't (Windows NT) is having a cathartic 
effect on a number of vendors.  Even long-time Unix supporters are
beginning to see the circling of the wagons before the PC indians swoop
in to slaughter the fat-margin Unix tool vendors...

I understand that the INEL people have been funded to produce something
like what I was looking for, but it is at least a year out...  Oh, well,
I might have to just wait...

BL. As an example, how do you deal with directories in Ada? Easy to do
  . in C. Good "standard" libraries.

The GOTS AdaSAGE library gives me this, portable across DOS/Unix.

BL. How do you deal with string parsing in Ada? Easy to do in C. Good
  . "standard" libraries.

Two letters: 9X...  Or so I understand...

BL. How do you get command line arguments in Ada?  Easy to do in C.
  . It's part of the language.

Most compilers provide this already, although I prefer using a library
supplied by other than the compiler vendor, theirs is just too proprietary.

BL. What I want is for the Ada vendors to bundle a FULL POSIX 1003.5
  . library with the compiler. And when it is available, a .20 library,
  . too! THAT will make Ada easier to use and will remove many of the
  . arguments that allow the old guard to stay in their C ways.

Amen, brother...

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . Life's a tough job, and the hours are a bitch.
                                                                               
       

Re: HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!network.ucsd.edu!usc!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.]

In article <1557.237.uupcb@nitelog.com> michael.hagerty@nitelog.com (Michael Ha
gerty)  writes:
>I spoke with XVT, the builder we are now using, a number of times about
>an Ada binding and their response was that there was just not enough of
>a market.  Of course, Windon't (Windows NT) is having a cathartic 
>effect on a number of vendors.  Even long-time Unix supporters are
>beginning to see the circling of the wagons before the PC indians swoop
>in to slaughter the fat-margin Unix tool vendors...
>
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Mitre
has an Ada binding for XVT (which is a great product).  Has this
binding been made commercially available, or is it free for public
comsumption?


-- 
-Comments above aren't neceessarily the opinion of the SEI, AJPO, or CAE-Link-
David Weller  |  Have you hugged your DRAGOON lately?
----I'm the Ultimate International Masochist: I speak Ada AND Esperanto!-----

Re: HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!sp]

In article <1556.237.uupcb@nitelog.com> michael.hagerty@nitelog.com (Michael Ha
gerty)  writes:
>On Wed, 2 Jun 1993, Michael Feldman posted to All:
>
>MF. Meridian makes a small profit selling their compilers to students, at
>  . onesies retail prices of $99-199, depending on features. I don't think
>  . Meridian has tested the elasticity in dropping their commercial prices to,
>  . or slightly above, student levels, which would put them in direct
>  . competition with Borland products, and certainly with the high-end
>  . "professional" C-family compilers.
>
>I believe that they did once test the elasticity of pricing on their Mac
>product ($99) and managed to move very few compilers.  I am not certain
>whether this is because of the product, the interface, the marketing or
>the fact that quiche eaters (Mac users) do not use Ada...  [Oh, is this
>going to bring on the flames...]
>
I don't recall their dropping their _commercial_ price to $99. That was
certainly the student price, and still is, more or less (oh, OK, $129.).
Actually, on both the Intel and Mac platforms, the hardware has caught up.
Given that the typical Mac is now a decently fast 68030, I think it's time
to wake that compiler up. I use it now and then, and it's pretty good. I'd
like to see a "thicker" binding like the Think C++ class libraries.

Mike Feldman

HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[Mic hael Hagerty]

On Fri, 4 Jun 1993, David Weller posted to All:

DW. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Mitre
  . has an Ada binding for XVT (which is a great product).  Has this
  . binding been made commercially available, or is it free for public
  . comsumption?

Say it is so...  Please, say it is so...

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . The Magic of Windows:  Turns a 486 back into a PC/XT.
                                                                       

HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[Mic hael Hagerty]

On 4 Jun 93, Chris Barber posted, in response to Timothy Shimeall:

TS. , and, in fact, there are large portability problems for non-trivial 
  . non-Ada-based applications across even rather similar environments.  
  . (Right now, I'm trying to port the Aegis project-control system from 
  . Sun to Iris, and the bug-chasing is annoyingly complex...)

CB. Is this the fault of the languages used or of differences between 
  . operating systems?

The fact that each vendor of computer systems adds features to the common
languages which bring out certain performance features of their machines
at the cost of portability.  Programmers, seeking to squeeze performance
out of their programs, use these features and thereby limit the code to
that particular brand of hardware.  This is marketing and it is reasonable
to expect vendors to do it.

However, it is totally coneheaded for programmers to buy into this set of
limitations under the expectation that this particular vendor will be in
business and/or will always have the best/fastest hardware.

Numerous times I have been called in to assist in the porting of software
which has been written to take advantage of the last cycle of the machine.
In each and every instance, the cost (and time) of moving this software to
the new system has outstripped any inefficiency which may have remained in
the software if it were written in a portable manner conformant to a well
published standard.  In several cases, the cost of the port was orders of
magnitude greater than the efficiency gained through machine and/or vendor
specific code...

Just to go back...  I recall working on a payroll system (the one which 
paid my check) which was written in a time-sharing vendor's own version of
BASIC.  The vendor was bought out and the service was to be discontinued
in 30 days.  I was called in to help and succeeded in converting the system
to FORTRAN-66.  It was the only other language we had available on the two
systems, but it was standard...  It worked and I did get paid on time...

Regards, Mikey <michael.hagerty@nitelog.com>
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 . MR/2 1.50 #63 . Standards benefit consumers; demand compliance!!
                    

Re: HOW TO MAKE ADA MORE

[David Emery]

MITRE has developed a prototype (first cut) Ada Binding for XVT as
part of its work for one of our sponsors.  Once we get public release
from the sponsor (there's a "necessary event" that should happen in
the next two months before we get public release), we'll be talking
more about this.  In particular, we will be working on enhancing,
bombproofing and testing the binding under funding from the AJPO's Ada
Technology Insertion Program later this year.

Stay tuned....

				dave
p.s.  the Ada binding is a heluva lot easier and more reliable than
the C binding, even in its first iteration....