Re: Floating point emulation

[jvl@ocsystems.com (Joel VanLaven)]

Andrew Dunstan (amd001@its.maynick.com.au) wrote:
[snip]
: Most universities will not be able to purchase a meaningful support
: contract, I guess (in Australia they are being severely squeezed by a
: neanderthal government, and _every_ dollar has to be watched). I was
: surprised, however, to discover that my old university doesn't appear
: to be using GNAT, but a commercial compiler of moderate quality which
: I suspect (will try to verify) is still an Ada83 version, on Solaris
: platforms. 

: I have no idea what (if anything) they pay for this, but one idea did
: occur to me. Perhaps a GNAT Educational Fund could be established, to
: fund development that would be of educational interest. Of course,
: since I am no longer in the University world, this idea is put forward
: with the "recklessness of the non-combatant" :-). Not only could
: universities contribute the funds they might be paying for other,
: possibly old, compilers, but corporate donations could also be sought.

  Interesting idea.  Do not jump to conclusions about poor little
commercial compiler vendors (like us :) though.  Many compiler vendors
offer either severely discounted or (like us) free compilers and tools
for educational purposes.  Some are even Ada95.  Just as in the
commercial arena, educators should have multiple options when it comes
to compilers and tools.  An introductory cs course might need an easy
to use gui and debugger but not need all of the annexes.  Another course
might find the ability to produce java applets a big plus and one might
need cobol interfacing and functionality capabilities.  Many of us have
a favorite compiler and development environment.  Each has advantages
and drawbacks and sometimes which we use is chosen for us.

  I would rather see more compiler-independant packages and so on put
forward than see a lot of special enhancements to one compiler.  I
think that these standard libraries are what we are missing, not the
compilers.

: Just a thought.

  Likewise.  (It does seem like it might be a good idea)

[snip]

-- 
-- Joel VanLaven