Re: Experiences/history of Aetech Ada compiler?

[RLOKER01@HARRIS.COM (Robert C. Lokerson)]

In Article <358gnp$1lm@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> "Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>" says:
> Our department has the possibility of supplying students with 
> the Aetech Ada compiler at a fairly low price (in conjuction with a book).
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has used this compiler and could tell me
> of any weaknesses it may have.
> 
> So far it seems to handle things such as generics and tasks ok, but
> it does not implement representation clauses at all.
> 
 
I got their "LearnAda" product about 15 months ago.  It is the only ADA
compiler I have any (real) experience with.  I learned a lot trying to use
it.  I wrote a few useful tools for other groups around here using it.  Its
been 7 months since I was able to justify using in in my work.
 
My personal style of programming has evolved into one which uses a lot of
arrays of pointers to constant strings of varying lengths.  I have not been
able to get this compiler to properly construct them unless they are created
at run time with the "access" type scheme.  This might be ok (and in the ADA
spirit) but I wish I could have "all" the initializations happen at
elaboration-time.  (If thay makes any sense... I don't really consider myself
an ADA expert... Much as I would like to be)
 
The editor that comes with LearnAda has a limited source file size, but one
can get around that by using another (less-helpful) editor when one
encounters that limit.  I have not found a meaningful limit to the Compiler
Source size.  (Hint... After getting around the size limit with another
editor... try going back to using the context-sensitive LearnAda Editor.)
  
 
 


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