* Ada and QNX @ 2000-09-29 0:00 Michal Morawski 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Michal Morawski @ 2000-09-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi Does anybody know is it possible to use ADA'95 compiler (e.g. GNAT) in QNX enviroment. This question includes debuggers (pdb), run time support etc? Thank you in advance Michal Morawski (morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 Ada and QNX Michal Morawski @ 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-09-30 2:35 ` DuckE 2 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Jeff Creem @ 2000-09-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) There is not really a full stable GCC port to QNX available so a GNAT port would probably need to finish/clean that up first.... I do not know of any other Ada 95 ports to that OS either. Of course in these days of CNN/Time driven Software Tools selection it is clearly just a matter of time before everyone is using NT/Linux and Java... But seriously if you are not already using QNX then I think you will have to look at one of the many other fine RTOSs for Ada 95. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michal Morawski" <morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl> Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.os.qnx Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 3:53 AM Subject: Ada and QNX > Hi > > Does anybody know is it possible to use ADA'95 compiler (e.g. GNAT) in QNX > enviroment. > This question includes debuggers (pdb), run time support etc? > > Thank you in advance > Michal Morawski (morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl) > > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem @ 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-10-03 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 0 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-09-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8r1uc0$dve$1@pyrite.mv.net>, "Jeff says... > >There is not really a full stable GCC port to QNX available so a GNAT port >would probably need to finish/clean that up first.... That's probably just your opinion ... you can't have any deeper experiences with QRTP. AFAIK ... the gcc sources are not yet available for QRTP, so you can't build GNAT yet. >I do not know of any other Ada 95 ports to that OS either. Really ? What ports to so called 'fine RTOSes' do you have in mind ?? Regards Armin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-03 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Jeff Creem @ 2000-09-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Armin Steinhoff" <Armin@Steinhoff_de> wrote in message news:8r25kg0ujl@drn.newsguy.com... > In article <8r1uc0$dve$1@pyrite.mv.net>, "Jeff says... > > > >There is not really a full stable GCC port to QNX available so a GNAT port > >would probably need to finish/clean that up first.... > > That's probably just your opinion ... you can't have any deeper experiences with > QRTP. > Hmm..Well I admit that I have not specific experience in the area but my response was based on a search of the GCC archives for QNX info and then looking at this FAQ (About a year old) http://www.schoenbrun.com/mba/faq.htm#L48 It save you having to click it says 48) Is GCC available? GCC is available, at following URL http://www.teaser.fr/~jcmichot/gcc This release contain GCC 2.7.2 and G++ compiler. You need WatcomC lib & linker to use this release of gcc. In general, once developers start using Watcom C/C++, demand for GCC isn't as high. Watcom provides a very good, high quality C and C++ development environment. So, when I say it is not stable what I mean is it is not in the baseline GCC tree. It is only supported by an individual and it requires non GNU libs and linkers...I am not saying this is impossible to get working now with GNAT but it certainly is likely to raise the bar. > AFAIK ... the gcc sources are not yet available for QRTP, so you can't build > GNAT yet. > > >I do not know of any other Ada 95 ports to that OS either. > > Really ? What ports to so called 'fine RTOSes' do you have in mind ?? > vxWorks (Tornado) has Ada 95 support from ACT (GNAT), Rational, OC Systems, Green Hills. LynxOS has Ada 95 support from ACT, Rational and probably others Not sure of the state of it but RTLinux from Zentropix was working with ACT for integration of GNAT into their RTLinux Product. There is GNAT support for RTEMS. Concurrent Computer Corp has what appears to be a nice POSIX compliant RT Unix based OS with Ada 95 support fully integrated into their tools. There are many others. We can certainly debate the "fineness" of these other RTOSs against QNX but somewhere in the mix I think you will find an OS that certainly competes. Having said all of that with QNX being now somewhat free it would be cool if there was a GNAT port so since it is just my opionion that it would be difficult to do a port perhaps you could pull one together. I'd love to start playing with it on monday. Let me know what time I can download it. (Sorry...I am just mean at heart) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem @ 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-09-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8r29q0$q6j$1@pyrite.mv.net>, "Jeff says... > > >"Armin Steinhoff" <Armin@Steinhoff_de> wrote in message >news:8r25kg0ujl@drn.newsguy.com... >> In article <8r1uc0$dve$1@pyrite.mv.net>, "Jeff says... >> > >> >There is not really a full stable GCC port to QNX available so a GNAT >> >port would probably need to finish/clean that up first.... >> >> That's probably just your opinion ... you can't have any deeper >> experiences with QRTP. >> > >Hmm..Well I admit that I have not specific experience in the area but >my response was based on a search of the GCC archives for QNX info and >then looking at this FAQ (About a year old) > >http://www.schoenbrun.com/mba/faq.htm#L48 Ahh ... that FAQ is completely useless for QRTP ... it is a FAQ for QNX4 :-) >It save you having to click it says > >48) Is GCC available? > >GCC is available, at following URL http://www.teaser.fr/~jcmichot/gcc This >release contain GCC 2.7.2 and G++ compiler. You need WatcomC lib & linker to >use this release of gcc. That gcc is a private port from Jean Michot ... and it is also targeting QNX4 :-)) > >In general, once developers start using Watcom C/C++, demand for GCC isn't >as high. Watcom provides a very good, high quality C and C++ development >environment. Yes ... but Watcom C++ is not available for QRTP! >So, when I say it is not stable what I mean is it is not in the baseline GCC >tree. It is only supported by an individual and it requires non GNU libs and >>linkers...I am not saying this is impossible to get working >now with GNAT but it certainly is likely to raise the bar. > > >> AFAIK ... the gcc sources are not yet available for QRTP, so you can't >> build GNAT yet. >> >> >I do not know of any other Ada 95 ports to that OS either. >> >> Really ? What ports to so called 'fine RTOSes' do you have in mind ?? >> >vxWorks (Tornado) has Ada 95 support from ACT (GNAT), Rational, OC Systems, >Green Hills. >LynxOS has Ada 95 support from ACT, Rational and probably others >Not sure of the state of it but RTLinux from Zentropix was working with ACT >for integration of GNAT into their RTLinux Product. >There is GNAT support for RTEMS. >Concurrent Computer Corp has what appears to be a nice POSIX compliant RT >Unix based OS with Ada 95 support fully integrated into their tools. > >There are many others. We can certainly debate the "fineness" of these other >RTOSs against QNX but somewhere in the mix I think you will find an OS that >>certainly competes. Sure ... IMHO Lynx (BlueCat) is direct comparable with QRTP (QNX/Neutrino) >Having said all of that with QNX being now somewhat free it would be cool if >there was a GNAT port so since it is just my opionion that it would be >>difficult to do a port perhaps you could pull one together. As I mentioned before ... the gcc/qcc sources are not yet available for QRTP. > I'd love to start playing with it on monday. Let me know what >time I can download it. You can download it since several days :-) Regards Armin PS : Where are the sources of the 'OPEN SOURCE' QRTP ?? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem @ 2000-10-03 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8r25kg0ujl@drn.newsguy.com>, Armin says... > >In article <8r1uc0$dve$1@pyrite.mv.net>, "Jeff says... >> >>There is not really a full stable GCC port to QNX available so a GNAT port >>would probably need to finish/clean that up first.... > >That's probably just your opinion ... you can't have any deeper experiences >>with QRTP. > >AFAIK ... the gcc sources are not yet available for QRTP, so you can't build >GNAT yet. You can build it ... I found out that the gcc sources are available at ftp://ftp.qnx.com/usr/free/neutrino/development/gnu :-) Regards Armin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 Ada and QNX Michal Morawski 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem @ 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (2 more replies) 2000-09-30 2:35 ` DuckE 2 siblings, 3 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: James Boucher @ 2000-09-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer from the old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. DEAD. My $3000 Alsys ADA compiler suite have been removed for 5 years. Yes there are legacy issues and as I have said I loved ADA. Might I add that if ADA was to rise from the grave, QNX RTP would be the most responsive realtime OS to put in on. Most people criticise ADA for its multitasking overhead. RTP would keep this to a TRUE minimum. I would love to see a port of GNAT but it would only be a curiousity. Not even DOD nor DND use ADA anymore. (In DND, I can only recall a few LSEC projects (IFCCS?) that used it. All the new projects were C/C++. Maybe TCCCS had some ADA, I can't recall. If ADA had Gui/audio constructs it would have beat JAVA as JAVA came many years later. Oh Well. Good Luck, Jim "Michal Morawski" <morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl> wrote in message news:8r1i82$ri3$1@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl... > Hi > > Does anybody know is it possible to use ADA'95 compiler (e.g. GNAT) in QNX > enviroment. > This question includes debuggers (pdb), run time support etc? > > Thank you in advance > Michal Morawski (morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl) > > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher @ 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-14 0:00 ` ahummmm 2000-09-30 0:00 ` gdemont 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-09-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <V_hB5.59429$dZ2.20181071@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, "James Boucher" <jaboucher@home.com> wrote: > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer > from the old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. > DEAD. Well I won't comment specifically on this piece of nonsense, but I do have a general comment, applicable to Ada folks as well, that it is remarkable how people are ready to assume that a technology is dead just because they don't use it any more. All the time I meet people o who think Pascal is not used for serious industrial projects any more (or perhaps never was). o who think that OS/2 is no longer in use o who think that PL/1 is no longer in use You even find more ludicrous examples, such as people who think that COBOL is no longer in use. When our department at NYU sat down to discuss the PL to use in the first year course a couple of years ago, I was quite appalled to hear a professor say that he thought one of the reasons that we should stop teaching Pascal was that it was not used commercially. I asked him how he knew, and without hesitation, he said "well I never encountered it" -- this was someone with minimal experience with *ANY* real world software. It is particularly ironic to make this statement in New York City, where the Metropolitan Transport Authority has till recently used primarily Pascal for many technical functions (I say till recently, since the most recent new contract has switched to the Matra code which is in Ada). During this same conversation, the argument trotted out in favor of Java was that it was widely used in industry. Again, no one actually knew this to be the case (and indeed examples of successful large scale use of Java are actually few and far between). But they thought it was, so that was good enough. Of course an honest reaction to the bogus argument that one should teach a widely used language would be that the only reasonable choices are Visual Basic or COBOL, but I can promise that virtually all the faculty members around that or any similar table in the US are (a) quite ignorant about these two languages and (b) quite sure they want to stay ignorant :-) Robert Dewar Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-14 0:00 ` ahummmm 2000-10-15 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 0 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: ahummmm @ 2000-10-14 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <V_hB5.59429$dZ2.20181071@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, "James Boucher" <jaboucher@home.com> wrote: > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer > from the old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. > DEAD. Well I won't comment specifically on this piece of nonsense, but I do have a general comment, applicable to Ada folks as well, that it is remarkable how people are ready to assume that a technology is dead just because they don't use it any more. All the time I meet people o who think Pascal is not used for serious industrial projects any more (or perhaps never was). o who think that OS/2 is no longer in use Make me laugh !! Lol Our "up to date" multi trunk corprate NEC 3500 is controlled by OS/2 !! Keeps all 2500 phones in the biulding up and running, solid as a rock. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-14 0:00 ` ahummmm @ 2000-10-15 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Steve Bellenot 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: James Boucher @ 2000-10-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I am amazed at how people have only replied to the first "eye catching line". The rest of this post was my explanation of the greatness and potential of ADA and why I was so sad when I and several other who were in charge of promoting/enforcing the Canadian ADA policy were forced to abandon our efforts. I noted that they pulled this post and left people only to read the first line which was meant as a joke to open my disertation on my love for ADA. By the way, who pulled the post? Jim "ahummmm" <nope@nope.na> wrote in message news:8FCDFD7EEnopenopena@63.209.170.206... > In article <V_hB5.59429$dZ2.20181071@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, > "James Boucher" <jaboucher@home.com> wrote: > > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer > > from the old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. > > DEAD. > > > Well I won't comment specifically on this piece of nonsense, > but I do have a general comment, applicable to Ada folks > as well, that it is remarkable how people are ready to assume > that a technology is dead just because they don't use it > any more. > > All the time I meet people > > o who think Pascal is not used for serious industrial > projects any more (or perhaps never was). > > o who think that OS/2 is no longer in use > > Make me laugh !! Lol > Our "up to date" multi trunk corprate NEC 3500 is controlled by OS/2 !! > Keeps all 2500 phones in the biulding up and running, solid as a rock. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-15 0:00 ` James Boucher @ 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Steve Bellenot 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Steve Bellenot @ 2000-10-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <sXeG5.8390$N%1.4346661@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, James Boucher <jaboucher@home.com> wrote: >I am amazed at how people have only replied to the first >"eye catching line". The rest of this post was my explanation >of the greatness and potential of ADA and why I >was so sad when I and several other who were in >charge of promoting/enforcing the Canadian ADA policy >were forced to abandon our efforts. I noted that >they pulled this post and left people only to >read the first line which was meant as a joke to >open my disertation on my love for ADA. By the >way, who pulled the post? >Jim My understanding is that Java has given new life to Ada code. That is there is an Ada to Java `compiler' which takes Ada code and turns it into Java class files. -- http://www.math.fsu.edu/~bellenot bellenot <At/> math.fsu.edu +1.850.644.7189 (4053fax) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-14 0:00 ` ahummmm 2000-10-15 0:00 ` James Boucher @ 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 1 sibling, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Lao Xiao Hai @ 2000-10-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) ahummmm wrote: > In article <V_hB5.59429$dZ2.20181071@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, > "James Boucher" <jaboucher@home.com> wrote: > > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer > > from the old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. > > DEAD. From time to time I hear somone say that COBOL is dead. Yet I spent three hours today preparing a briefing on COBOL for someone who will present it to a large corporation's programming staff beginning Monday of this week. If a programming language dies in the middle of a forest, will anyone hear it? If someone says a programming language is dead often enough, will it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Does the word "dead" when used to describe the state of a programming language, preclude the later use of the word, "resurrected" or perhaps, for those of you with a more mystical bent, "reincarnated?" Whatever you may think, an idea does not disappear so easily from the world and as long as there are advocates of that idea, it can find its way back into popularity. I wonder if the authormeans Ada is obsolete. If so, his amorous proclamation may be like that of a long-married spouse slipping over the brink of a forties crisis. Those who know Ada realize that it is far from obsolete. Those who do not make such pronouncements out of ignorance. Some of the alternatives to Ada are more popular. Some misguided managers have mistaken popularity for quality and several DoD contractors have made the error of forsaking Ada in favor of inferior technologies such as C++. Does this mean Ada is dead in those organizations? Not really. As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they reconsider the benefits of Ada. C++, for example, turns out to be just another pretty face. Even as early as the wedding night, scrubbed of its makeup, shed of its adornments, the C++ honeymoon can quite suddenly be over. Sadly, we continue to see some make decisions for form over substance. But "Ada is DEAD?" Hardly. It appears that a prodigality of resources dedicated to opposing technologies was important so those deluded souls could understand the importance of what they had in the first place. Now they need to get over buyer's remorse and get back to the solid capabilities available in Ada. So, you might want to rethink you use of the adjective, "DEAD." Then again, one could consider the admonition of the poet, John Donne, in "Death Be Not Proud." Richard Riehle ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai @ 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ken Garlington ` (3 more replies) 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 1 sibling, 4 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 5:27 UTC (permalink / raw) Lao Xiao Hai wrote: > > Some of the alternatives to Ada are more popular. Some misguided > managers have mistaken popularity for quality and several DoD > contractors have made the error of forsaking Ada in favor of inferior > technologies such as C++. Does this mean Ada is dead in those > organizations? Not really. > > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > reconsider the benefits of Ada. C++, for example, turns out to be just > another pretty face. Even as early as the wedding night, scrubbed of its > makeup, shed of its adornments, the C++ honeymoon can quite suddenly > be over. Sadly, we continue to see some make decisions for form over > substance. > To contuinue the analogy, it sounds pretty much like a rant of a left woman about how foolish her guy was to marry another woman, because her breasts are fake and most of her face is a surgeons's talent. Those rants never bring the guy back, because if he's left then it was for a good reason. He probably did not like her enough with all her real good amenities. > But "Ada is DEAD?" Hardly. It appears that a prodigality of resources > dedicated to opposing technologies was important so those deluded souls > could understand the importance of what they had in the first place. > Now they need to get over buyer's remorse and get back to the solid > capabilities available in Ada. > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient code) and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally. Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming (even C++ is too high). And yet it is not as portable and distributable as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Of course, those are just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I don't say that those opinions are absolute right. In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time until a) and b) is done. - Igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ken Garlington 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ken Garlington @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Igor Kovalenko" <kovalenko@home.com> wrote in message news:39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com... [snip] > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. An odd metric... My copy of "Standard C" by Plauger and Brodie is 207 pages of fairly small font. > If someone manages to > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > code) GNAT appears to be fairly portable (at least, it's available on a number of hosts). Without knowing what the precise definition of "efficient" is in this context, I can't say if there's a compiler that meets your needs in that respect. It's certainly been used in hard real-time embedded environments, which is a pretty good operational definition of "efficient". > and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > thing, then yes it might resurrect. I haven't seen any problems in this area in my organization. > Even then, I have doubts personally. > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming > (even C++ is too high). I'm trying to think of a low-level construct available in C, but not Ada, that would be used for system level programming, and I'm drawing a blank. Bit-level operations? Pointer manipulation? Interrupt management? I've done all those in Ada without any difficulty. > And yet it is not as portable and distributable > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Since Ada can run on the JVM, how could it be less portable or distributable? > Plus, it smells too much > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Now I think you're on to something. Too many programmers have the "secret handshake" syndrome: They want to use languages that are inscrutable to the unwashed non-programmer. > Of course, those are > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I > don't say that those opinions are absolute right. > > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time > until a) and b) is done. "a) and b)" are not the problem. Ada's troubles are not technology related. Ada's troubles come from poor marketing earlier in its history -- too many vendors making too many mistakes. The worst performers are gone now, but they left behind bitter feelings in a lot of potential users. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ken Garlington @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX Gautier 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 3 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko wrote: > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > code) and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally. A) There *are* good quality compilers for Ada for lots of platforms. B) Nobody needs to know "the whole damn thing" in order to do useful work with it. (I doubt anybody knows *all* of C, Cobol, Java, Lisp, etc. since you seldom need *all* of a language to get a job done.) > > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming > (even C++ is too high). And yet it is not as portable and distributable I've heard this old saw so often I just want to cry. Would you accept as "system level programming" a jet engine control system functioning in a hard-realtime setting where there is *no* OS except for that which you write yourself? As in "I'm programming down at the bare metal, building my own interrupt handlers, low-level device I/O, etc."? Chances are, you've flown in a jet with such an engine control. Yes, it's really been done a number of times. There are a lot more examples, but these I can testify to in court since I developed them. Can we *please* never again hear that "Ada is no good for systems programming"? > > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Of course, those are > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I > don't say that those opinions are absolute right. > You're never wrong about what you "like" or "prefer". You don't have to like Ada. I don't have to like C. However, I'll concede that C has its place in the world an often has either technical or business merits that make it the right choice for some applications. I would like people to look at Ada in a serious technical way with an eye toward trying to recognize its strengths & an honest effort to look for where it would be useful. All too often, people begin their inspection of Ada with an attitude of: "I *hate* Ada. Now let me learn enough about it to find or invent reasons why hating Ada is the right answer." This is a very human action. We all do it from time to time. But like many human actions, it is not terribly useful or constructive. > > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time > until a) and b) is done. > A and B are done. See http://www.Adapower.com/ for sources for good quality compilers and a bibliography of good books for learning Ada. (Either *all* of it or just the parts you need to do your job.) I personally like Bard Crawford's book (see: www.LearnAda.com.) as a "quick" introduction to the language for those who need to get familiar with the basic features of the language without becoming a language lawyer. See also: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada95books.html#1 for more books about Ada. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (4 more replies) 0 siblings, 5 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and blooming and shining in all its glory. Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, so I'm kinda curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more complex language as Ada. Aside from code generation itself, how do they manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. It could be that I simply don't know enough and miss something. Would be glad to be enlightened :) - igor Marin David Condic wrote: > > Igor Kovalenko wrote: > > > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to > > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > > code) and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > > thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally. > > A) There *are* good quality compilers for Ada for lots of platforms. > B) Nobody needs to know "the whole damn thing" in order to do useful work with > it. (I doubt anybody knows *all* of C, Cobol, Java, Lisp, etc. since you > seldom need *all* of a language to get a job done.) > > > > > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming > > (even C++ is too high). And yet it is not as portable and distributable > > I've heard this old saw so often I just want to cry. Would you accept as > "system level programming" a jet engine control system functioning in a > hard-realtime setting where there is *no* OS except for that which you write > yourself? As in "I'm programming down at the bare metal, building my own > interrupt handlers, low-level device I/O, etc."? Chances are, you've flown in > a jet with such an engine control. Yes, it's really been done a number of > times. There are a lot more examples, but these I can testify to in court > since I developed them. Can we *please* never again hear that "Ada is no good > for systems programming"? > > > > > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much > > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Of course, those are > > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I > > don't say that those opinions are absolute right. > > > > You're never wrong about what you "like" or "prefer". You don't have to like > Ada. I don't have to like C. However, I'll concede that C has its place in the > world an often has either technical or business merits that make it the right > choice for some applications. I would like people to look at Ada in a serious > technical way with an eye toward trying to recognize its strengths & an honest > effort to look for where it would be useful. All too often, people begin their > inspection of Ada with an attitude of: "I *hate* Ada. Now let me learn enough > about it to find or invent reasons why hating Ada is the right answer." This > is a very human action. We all do it from time to time. But like many human > actions, it is not terribly useful or constructive. > > > > > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good > > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time > > until a) and b) is done. > > > > A and B are done. See http://www.Adapower.com/ for sources for good quality > compilers and a bibliography of good books for learning Ada. (Either *all* of > it or just the parts you need to do your job.) I personally like Bard > Crawford's book (see: www.LearnAda.com.) as a "quick" introduction to the > language for those who need to get familiar with the basic features of the > language without becoming a language lawyer. See also: > http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada95books.html#1 for more books about Ada. > > MDC > -- > ====================================================================== > Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ > Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m > Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey > and car keys to teenage boys." > > -- P. J. O'Rourke > ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 5:38 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX David Starner ` (3 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EB283A.9F7B4F76@motorola.com>, Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is > cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and > blooming and shining in all its glory. perhaps because mere technical superiority is not enough. Remember that the really successful programming languages in terms of usage (COBOL, Visual Basic, and I guess even Excel Macro language should count) do not succeed solely because of technical excellence, but because of historical factors. After all Fortran succeeded over Algol-60, and for SURE that was not a matter of superiority of language. I also note that Windows-9X succeeded over OS/2, which is even more surprising. Technical folks always suppose that technical excellence is enough to succeed in the market place. I would have thought that the dominance of Microsoft in the operating system arena (even in the MS DOS days!) would have perhaps reminded people that this is not the case, but .... > Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? and perhaps they most certainly are, a lot of decisions are made on the basis of uninformed personal prejudice of the kind you exhibited. > Nobody appears to write an OS in Ada, being so good for > system level work. Actually Ada would be an excellent technical choice for writing an operating system, the reason that the current operating systems are written in some other language is mostly historical. > And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate > good code for C Well many people say all sorts of unsupported things (you demonstrate this principle in your post), but that does not mean much. How does gcc compare with other compilers? Well it varies from target to target, it is also pretty hard to judge in some cases, since many proprietary compilers have been specialized carefully to the SPEC suite, and this has not been done for GCC. So you need to be careful what you are comparing. Even if you do use the SPEC suite to compare, gcc often does quite well in the comparison. There are certainly cases where gcc does better than other compilers, and there are cases where it does worse, and of course things are a moving target because gcc is constantly being worked on, and more and more major development depends on gcc (many large scale C users, e.g. AOL, at this stage have standardized on the use of gcc, and large system houses like HP and Sun are definitely paying attention to gcc performance). > So I'm kinda > curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more > complex language as Ada. It would be easy to satisfy your curiosity, the compiler and sources are out there. > Aside from code generation itself, how do they > manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable > way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, > but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless > suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. You suspect wrong, in fact RV is programmed using standard POSIX primitives that are typically available on all commonly used systems. Now of course RV is a fairly high level abstraction, which you use if you want to abstract at this level. If you want lower level things, then you use them in Ada (indeed there is nothing to stop you using any low level system dependent gizmo that you would use in C if you like). In general you seem a bit too willing to substitute your ill-informed guesses for facts. > It could be that I simply don't know enough and miss something. Yup, it could be :-) > Would be > glad to be enlightened :) > - igor As I say, the sources for GNAT are out there, you are welcome to work on enlightenment! Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-17 5:38 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr. 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 0 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 5:38 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote: > perhaps because mere technical superiority is not enough. > Remember that the really successful programming languages > in terms of usage (COBOL, Visual Basic, and I guess even > Excel Macro language should count) do not succeed solely > because of technical excellence, but because of historical > factors. > > After all Fortran succeeded over Algol-60, and for SURE > that was not a matter of superiority of language. I also > note that Windows-9X succeeded over OS/2, which is even > more surprising. > > Technical folks always suppose that technical excellence > is enough to succeed in the market place. I would have > thought that the dominance of Microsoft in the operating > system arena (even in the MS DOS days!) would have perhaps > reminded people that this is not the case, but .... Did you intentionally overlooked the fact that some new languages found their way into mainstream and some did not? They all faced similar uphill battle against historical issues and human prejudice. Nevertheless, Java did hit the streets. And C++ did, roughly at the same time as Ada failed. Sure C++ had advantage of being similar to C, but then Ada is similar enough to Pascal. Perl emerged as major scripting language although I doubt there was anything like dedicated marketing support and there were and still are many competitors. How would you explain all that? Also, comparing programming languages to OSes is really stretched analogy, to put it mildly. A new OS faces much more challenge to make its way, due to hardware support and applications availability issues. No such problems with PL - if one have to write new code anyway, it does not matter which language to choose from compatibility point of view. > > Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? > > and perhaps they most certainly are, a lot of decisions are > made on the basis of uninformed personal prejudice of the > kind you exhibited. I suppose you always do exhibit absolute lack of personal prejudice, so that gives you right to blame me for it. > Actually Ada would be an excellent technical choice for writing > an operating system, the reason that the current operating > systems are written in some other language is mostly historical. Historically OS were written in assembler. Then people started to use C and they don't seem to be inclined to change that. You can call it historical, I will call it practical. > > And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate > > good code for C > > Well many people say all sorts of unsupported things (you > demonstrate this principle in your post) You could not fail to mention that, could you? Which exactly unsupported thing did _I_ say AND claimed it to be anything but matter of my personal taste? I do not share the view of those who denounces GCC. I said 'some people say' merely to point to simple fact that there are such people. Based on that I asked how people can so easily claim GNAT to be efficient given that the language places a lot more burden onto compiler. I did not say it is impossible for GNAT to be good but I said that it probably trades efficiency of code for portability (by which I mean ability of compiler to generate code for different architectures/OSes). Note, I'm not blaming either GCC or GNAT for such a tradeoff - in fact I supported such tradeoff in an another discussion. > It would be easy to satisfy your curiosity, the compiler and > sources are out there. That kind of answer usually means you hardly can explain that yourself. > You suspect wrong, in fact RV is programmed using standard > POSIX primitives that are typically available on all commonly > used systems. That is rather vague statement. Even if 'standard' (whatever that means) POSIX primitives were available on all systems (which is not true), then POSIX is about portability, not efficiency. > Now of course RV is a fairly high level > abstraction, which you use if you want to abstract at this > level. If you want lower level things, then you use them > in Ada (indeed there is nothing to stop you using any > low level system dependent gizmo that you would use in > C if you like). > If you throw away fairly high level stuff of Ada then it might not be so much better than C++. Why bother learning it and convincing management to use it? > In general you seem a bit too willing to substitute your > ill-informed guesses for facts. > That's 3rd time in single post you're pointing out to my misbehavior. Just can't miss a chance, can you? If this thread is gonna be about me personally, we might want to move it to alt.sex.selebrities because I'm gonna be a star if you keep it that way 8-} - igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 5:38 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr. 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: David C. Hoos, Sr. @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote in message news:39EBE584.FC6504CA@home.com... > Robert Dewar wrote: > > perhaps because mere technical superiority is not enough. <snip> > > > And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate > > > good code for C > > > > Well many people say all sorts of unsupported things (you > > demonstrate this principle in your post) > > You could not fail to mention that, could you? Which exactly unsupported > thing did _I_ say AND claimed it to be anything but matter of my > personal taste? I do not share the view of those who denounces GCC. I > said 'some people say' merely to point to simple fact that there are > such people. Based on that I asked how people can so easily claim GNAT > to be efficient given that the language places a lot more burden onto > compiler. I did not say it is impossible for GNAT to be good but I said > that it probably trades efficiency of code for portability (by which I > mean ability of compiler to generate code for different > architectures/OSes). <snip> You did say "And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C" in your earlier post, then when defending the statement you quoted yourself "I said 'some people say' merely to point.." There's quite a difference between "many" and "some." That "some" say it I have no doubt, but that "many" say it, I don't believe can be supported. By the way, the gcc compilers basically have a common front end for each language producing a common intermediate language, and then a back end specific to the architecture/OS. Thus, a single compiler does _not_ "generate code for different architectures/OSes," so there's no need to "trade efficiency of code for portability" as you suggest. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 5:38 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr. @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2000-10-19 0:00 ` ADA vs. SmallEiffel Armin Steinhoff 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko wrote >Did you intentionally overlooked the fact that some new languages found >their way into mainstream and some did not? They all faced similar >uphill battle against historical issues and human prejudice. >Nevertheless, Java did hit the streets. And C++ did, roughly at the same >time as Ada failed. Sure C++ had advantage of being similar to C, but >then Ada is similar enough to Pascal. Perl emerged as major scripting >language although I doubt there was anything like dedicated marketing >support and there were and still are many competitors. How would you >explain all that? C++ found its way to the mainstream for two reasons 1) G++ was free. 2) a better C. 1) meant that a lot of people could teach OOP without paying for compilers. Students did not notice the cost aspect of this and thought that C++ was the best available OO language. Java found its way to the mainstream for two reasons 1) the compiler was free. 2) a better C++. Se above paragraph for how this works for 1). Reason 2) means that people have a hard time getting C++ code to work. Some claim that it takes longer time to get C++ code to work than the equivalent C code. >Historically OS were written in assembler. Then people started to use C >and they don't seem to be inclined to change that. You can call it >historical, I will call it practical. Assembly language operating systems are the exception and have been that for quite a long time. The last 20 years people have probably done most of the operating system work in C, but also Ada, C++, Modula-2 and various Pascal dialects. >If you throw away fairly high level stuff of Ada then it might not be so >much better than C++. Why bother learning it and convincing management >to use it? Because it saves time. Lots of time. See the "Interesting Ada article" thread in comp.lang.ada. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* ADA vs. SmallEiffel 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2000-10-19 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-19 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi All, SmallEiffel (http://smalleiffel.loria.fr )compiles out of the box after setting the env. var 'SmallEiffel' ... has someone done a port of GNAT for QNX RTP ?? Would be nice if we could do some benchmarks ... .Armin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` David Starner 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Gautier ` (2 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: David Starner @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 11:09:30 -0500, Igor Kovalenko wrote: >Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to >write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. Tradition; what the programmers know; popularity; compiler availability - all reasons why OSs are implemented in the langauges they are. >And by the way, >many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, so I'm kinda >curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more >complex language as Ada. GCC produces pretty good code. It's not best, but it's not bad code either. Ada's range constraints can often help the compile produce better code than a language without range constraints? As for Ada compilers, I remember a Dr. Dobbs article a few years back, an interview with Prof. Kahan, who pointed out that the only compiler to take full advantage of the ix87 stack was one specific Ada compiler. Like all other compilers, Ada compilers range from the good to the bad. >Aside from code generation itself, how do they >manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable >way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, >but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless >suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. Why would you suspect that? What justifaction would you have to assume that? It's just like C - you can implement the C library in a portable way, or an efficent way, and it varies, but most good C implementations are done the efficent way. Same with Ada. -- David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org http://dvdeug.dhis.org If you wish to strive for peace of soul then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX David Starner @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 4 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor: > Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is > cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and > blooming and shining in all its glory. You should take courses about psychology of the masses... > Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to > write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. And by the way, > many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, Who says that ?! Did you play the famous Quake 1 game, it is entirely made with GCC, including graphics... > so I'm kinda curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for > such a more complex language as Ada. It doesn't matter. With strong typing, GCC-GNAT knows better what animals are the variables (not just pointers to something) and optimizes indices, shifts, registers, inlinings, generics etc. nicely. You can take a look at my pure-software 3D experiments (see link below). > Aside from code generation itself, how do they > manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable > way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, > but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless > suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. For tasking, I can't tell, but e.g. for exceptions, they don't alter at all performance: they are well implemented !... Anyway you can see the resulting assembler code (gcc -S -O2 -gnatpn) for checking what GCC/GNAT does... ____________________________________________________ Gautier -- http://members.nbci.com/gdemont/e3d.htm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Gautier @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 4 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi Igor, In article <39EB283A.9F7B4F76@motorola.com>, Igor says... > >Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is >cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and >blooming and shining in all its glory. > >Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to >write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. I deed a lot of system level work ( file control processor of a PBX computer system) with the language CHILL. It is very similar to ADA because CHILL inherited a lot of ADA contructs ... so I can imagine to do the same work in ADA. >And by the way, many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, so >>I'm kinda curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more >complex language as Ada. Aside from code generation itself, how do they >manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient BTW the rendesvous based IPC of ADA is 99,9% similar to the QNX IPC ... so QNX seems to be the perfect platform for an ADA runtime environment :-) >AND portable way? Where is the problem? The implementations might be different ... but not the validated interface to the runtime environment of ADA. > Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, >but in Ada they are part of language ... not of the language, it's part of the runtime environment and that 'can' be build on top of a RTOS. > and having no proof I nevertheless >suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. I can't see why an ADA application should not be portable at source code level between validated ADA compilers and runtime environments ... >It could be that I simply don't know enough and miss something. Would be >glad to be enlightened :) Hope someone could do the GNAT port to QNX RTP for you ... so you could play a little bit with ADA ;-) ADA was created to support huge software projects ... so it contains a lot of paradigms which makes our life easier. Armin BTW ... the biggest disadvantage with ADA is(was) the puristic validation process (defined for by the DoD and used often as a competitiv wappen against non US implementations. Just my OBSERVATION ... years ago.) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar 4 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko wrote: > Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is > cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and > blooming and shining in all its glory. > To use an analogy that's been used before: Which is better? Sony's Beta format or VHS? From most technical standpoints, Beta was a better format. Why didn't it catch on? A thousand reasons can be given, but few will be based on some sort of "Technical Superiority" of VHS. I suppose a lot of C programmers don't like Ada because it is strict, disciplined and not as amenable to "clever tricks". I suppose the biggest reason is that Ada is simply not C and people like what they know and hate what they don't know. Since C got out there first and proliferated all over God's Green Acres via Unix, there are a lot of C programmers and they just aren't going to automatically "like" something that is not C or at least C-ish. > > Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to > write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. And by the way, Lots of people have doubts. I don't know many people with reasonable levels of familiarity and experience with Ada who have doubts about the language. Maybe they doubt its usefulness within a specific problem domain or a specific application because experience shows that some other way works better. Example: The kinds of things one might do with a shell script are not the sort of things Ada (or most other compiled languages) are as well suited for. As far as OS work goes, I think we ought to be clear about what we mean when we say "Operating System" or Systems Programming. There are lots of things I would consider to be an "Operating System" that have been written in Ada. Its a very good language for getting down to the bare metal as needed and provides the kinds of features that make building things like schedulers, interrupt handlers, DMA and port I/O access, etc. easy to do. The fact that Unix, Windows, OS/2 and maybe a few other "major" general purpose operating systems are not written in Ada hardly constitutes "proof" that you *can't* write something similar in Ada. It just demonstrates that the people responsible for picking the language for those operating systems didn't choose Ada. The reasons are largely non-technical - reasons like "Ada doesn't exist yet" or "I like C". You could write such an operating system in Ada. There is a group of folks off attempting to do just that - mostly as a labor of love. See: http://www.AdaOS.org/ and find out what they are up to. (Personally, I'd name the OS "Quixote" - but that's my sense of humor at work. :-) > > many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, so I'm kinda > curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more > complex language as Ada. Aside from code generation itself, how do they Remember that GNAT is not the only Ada compiler on the planet. I don't have any reason to believe that GNAT is particularly bad at code generation. It certainly makes pretty fast code for most "general purpose" kinds of programming tasks. Is it as highly optimizing as some other compilers? Don't know. Never did a comparison with GNAT to other things because I've not had cause to look at that compiler for purposes of an embedded application. However, I've used other Ada compilers for embedded, hard-realtime applications and found the code generation to be very excellent. The problem with this sort of thing is that the question is just too fuzzy. There's "Ada-The-Language" and there's "Ada-The-Implementation". Some early implementations of Ada were excruciatingly bad - thus all the "Ada-Is-Slow-As-Commanded-By-God" sorts of misinformation that flows from those who either don't know Ada or don't know much about computer languages and compilers. (You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. :-) As people began to understand the language and what it would take to compile it, two things happened: Ada got fast and compiler technology got better. There is nothing inherent about Ada that guarantees it *can't* be compiled to fast code. You do have to know the language to use it efficiently - just as you would need to know C or Fortran to use it efficiently. There certainly isn't anything in Ada to stop you from writing bad code if you don't know what you are doing. Same goes for C or any other language you care to name. Another problem is the question: "Fast at what?" Benchmarking compilers is an extremely tricky business and as anyone who has ever done it can tell you, you have to pick benchmarks that represent the kind of things you intend to do. There is just no way to make a blanket statement that "Compiler A Sucks" without asking the question "Sucks At Doing What?" You can't lay out a broad category like "Sucks At Making Operating System Code" because that covers way too much territory to be of any use. Does it suck at making efficient code for floating point linear computations? Does it suck at making code to move things around in memory? Does it suck at optimizing away hundreds of really small procedures? Seldom will a compiler for any language generate really tight code for all kinds of computations and it isn't often that a compiler will be horrible at *everything* it attempts to compile. > > manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable > way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries, > but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless > suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability. > Portable in what sense? At the source code level, the standard requires specific behavior that for one target may be easy to implement efficiently and for another target may be difficult to make efficient. Portability at the object code level? That's a real can of worms. Is a rendezvous an inherently expensive operation? It depends. They *can* be costly depending on what you are doing, but the argument in their favor is that of semantic content. For example, it costs more to do a rendezvous that passes parameters than it does to simply synchronize - but go ahead and don't pass parameters and you may find you have to resort to all sorts of other tricks to keep your data from getting whacked in the head, so you spent as much time or more "rolling your own" as you would have by just letting the compiler take care of it for you. In my engine control experience, there used to be a wide spread belief that fixed point math was faster than floating point math - given the presence of native floating point math on the processor. In one sense, this was true. Adding two fixed point numbers would happen in fewer clock cycles than two floating point numbers. But we did a study that ended up concluding that it was a wash. By the time you got done doing the work needed to handle all the scalings and so on, you added about as much workload as you saved. We went to floating point as a result and wached our error rates plument in the process. In other words, we invested some processor time in floating point and reaped a profit. I'd think you could look at things like the rendezvous in the same light. You have to understand what you're doing with parallel programming and understand the best way to get what you want out of it. Its not profitable to look at one mechanism in the language, declare it inefficient or non-portable and be done with it. The question has to be how best to accomplish the job and look at the features you have to get it done. If all you want to do is spawn a subprocess that will work independent of the main process - maybe the best way is with an OS call - or maybe you should use a task with no rendezvous. What is the cost of each? Is it significantly different? Will you end up putting a lot of spackle around the OS call to compensate for the things you *don't* get because it isn't a task? Or maybe they're identical in implementation? You can't tell until you pop the hood and take a look. BTW: Ada will let you do either. > > It could be that I simply don't know enough and miss something. Would be > glad to be enlightened :) > Well, I hope that you'd not take the "defensiveness" we Ada-ites sometimes exhibit as reason to abandon any investigation. We get that way because we often find Ada criticized unfairly because someone heard some rumor or inuendo that has no basis in fact and it upsets us to see what we know to be a useful language getting bashed that way. If you take the time to learn the language and build some non-trivial software with it, I'd bet you would find it has some very useful and unique qualities that could be helpful in developing things you may be involved in. You may still end up liking C better than Ada, but remember that the two languages had entirely different design requirements. Learning Ada might just improve some things about the way you program in C. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Frode Tennebø ` (5 more replies) 0 siblings, 6 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-17 0:28 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org>, Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org> wrote: > To use an analogy that's been used before: Which is better? Sony's Beta format or > VHS? From most technical standpoints, Beta was a better format. Why didn't it catch > on? A thousand reasons can be given, but few will be based on some sort of > "Technical Superiority" of VHS. I know this is off topic, but in fact I think the above is an example of myth, and exposes an interesting failure of many technical folks, which is that they do not understand what are and are not important technical characteristics. Yes, Beta had better picture quality, but that was NOT the important technical feature, the dominating technical feature was the maximum recording time, and VHS got ahead there so significantly that Beta could not catch up. I actually think this error is made in HDTV today, for most people resolution is not that important. Speaking as someone with high end HDTV equipment, I will say that most people don't really care about the difference between DVD (480p) and HDTV (720p or 1050i). The wide screen is important, but in my view the practice that is appearing of broadcasting 16 x 9 material in 1050i is a mistake, it would be better to broadcast more channels at 480p. Why is this relevant to comp.lang.ada? Well a lot of our discussion and support of Ada is based on alledged technical superiority, I say alledged because it is not so easy to prove superiority in this field. What we need to be sure of is that the factors that we stress are indeed those that are important and real. I recently saw someone say in an influential list on Ada that they thought that the fact that Ada had a better defined standard was a crucial element to Ada's success. My own feeling is that even if this were true (it is not!) then it would not be terribly important, and if we concentrated on that aspect to the exclusion of others, we would definitely be making the beta mistake, and even if we DID achieve a better defined standard, it is not what would impress the real world. What arguments would impress management. Well try this on for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. Robert Dewar Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Frode Tennebø 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison ` (4 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Frode Tennebø @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote: [snip] > What arguments would impress management. Well try this on > for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly > and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could > (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be > interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical > advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. My company is currently trying to "climb the CMM ladder" (sic). Could you please give me som pointers to such articles? -Frode -- ^ Frode Tenneb� | email: frodet@nvg.org | Frode@IRC ^ | with Standard.Disclaimer; use Standard.Disclaimer; | ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Frode Tennebø @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Steffen Huber ` (3 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote: > In article <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org>, > Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org> wrote: > > > To use an analogy that's been used before: Which is better? > > > Sony's Beta format or VHS? From most technical standpoints, Beta was > > a better format. Why didn't it catch on? A thousand reasons can be > > given, but few will be based on some sort of > > "Technical Superiority" of VHS. > > Yes, Beta had better picture quality, but that was NOT the > important technical feature, the dominating technical feature > was the maximum recording time, and VHS got ahead there so > significantly that Beta could not catch up. That is indeed a good example of a technical argument for VHS. However, I think a far more convincing argument in VHS's favor was that it was an open format, whereas Beta was closly held by one company. When in direct competition with an open platform, proprietary formats typically don't stand a chance. The field of history is strewn with the rotting corpses of "technically superior" proprietary products that tried to take on open standards. I'm sure everyone here could name a score such examples in the fields of computer hardware (lost out to the open PC standard) and OS (lost out to the relativly open Unix standard) fields alone. One could argue that the only reason the closed Windows OS made it this far is that it piggybacked on the dominant open computer standard (the PC). A particularly bold person could further argue that, given that an reasonably comparable open OS for the PC is now available, Windows is now doomed. That is exactly the argument being made in the essay at http://muq.org/~cynbe/rants/lastdino.htm . > I recently saw someone say in an influential list on Ada that > they thought that the fact that Ada had a better defined > standard was a crucial element to Ada's success. My own feeling > is that even if this were true (it is not!) then it would not > be terribly important, and if we concentrated on that aspect I'd actually say that person was onto something. The Ada standard is one of the few that is freely avaialable on the web for anyone to read. It is also one of the few language standards with any kind of teeth to it. Ada users *expect* to be able to take their code to any other Ada compiler and have it compile and even behave the same way when run. That means an Ada user is not nearly as tied to their compiler vendor after a large amount of code is written. That may prove more important to Ada's success than any of the "if you could only have one feature" thread answers. There's also the issue of protection from OS implementation issues. Most other languages require their users to go to the OS to do anything serious. Ada has things like tasking and intertask communications and synchronization in the language itself. Thus an Ada user is not nearly as tied to their OS as users of most other languages (even Java in some cases). So I can write something as complicated as a real-time scheduler, and move my code to another OS and compiler without changing a single line of code. (This is not hypotheical. We actually did this!) So Ada in many ways is a more "open" language standard than any other. This is the leverage I think it would be wisest to use in proselytizing the language to the world at large. The "technical superiority" arguments should still be thrown in as background info, to give technical folks good fodder for rationalizing their choice. But the emphasis should be on the open-ness of the language. -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8shnk8$kov$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote: > That is indeed a good example of a technical argument for VHS. However, > I think a far more convincing argument in VHS's favor was that it was an > open format, whereas Beta was closly held by one company. When in > direct competition with an open platform, proprietary formats > typically don't stand a chance. Well you know the general argument definitely appeals to me with my ACT hat on :-) But in fact I think that's rewriting history, I don't see that as the big factor in the failure of Beta. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Frode Tennebø 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Steffen Huber 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen ` (2 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Steffen Huber @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [comp.os.qnx deleted from Newsgroup list] In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote: > In article <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org>, > Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org> wrote: > > > To use an analogy that's been used before: Which is better? > > Sony's Beta format or VHS? From most technical standpoints, > > Beta was a better format. Why didn't it catch on? A thousand > > reasons can be given, but few will be based on some sort of > > "Technical Superiority" of VHS. > > I know this is off topic, I know, too, but it is just interesting that so many people cite the "Beta vs. VHS" example - look at the comp.sys.acorn.* hierarchy to find even more arguments ;-) > but in fact I think the above is > an example of myth, and exposes an interesting failure of > many technical folks, which is that they do not understand > what are and are not important technical characteristics. I don't think the race between the different home video formats was influenced by technical characteristics, at least not in a major way. > Yes, Beta had better picture quality, but that was NOT the > important technical feature, the dominating technical feature > was the maximum recording time, and VHS got ahead there so > significantly that Beta could not catch up. Actually, this is a weak point. In Europe, we had another home video format: Video 2000. It had a better picture quality than VHS and Beta, LongPlay was always in the specification, there were cassettes available which allowed 8 hours non-stop recording (with LongPlay in a superior quiality than VHS), and you could turn over the cassette to record the same amount of material again (just like audio cassettes). Video 2000 had hifi stereo sound much earlier than VHS. It had a clever tracking system to reduce still flickering. The machines were as cheap (or expensive, compared to today's prices ;-)) as their VHS counterparts. The only disadvantage of V2000 was that the video offices (sp? Those strange places where you can rent tapes) had more material on VHS than on V2000. Many people bought VHS and then never visited a video office - it is sometimes good enough to score at a point the customer doesn't even need! Everybody who has a still working V2000 machine is keen to keep it. Only lately the advent of very cheap S-VHS recorders which are able to record on standard VHS cassettes has made the V2000 system largely redundant. It all boils down to one simple fact: technical merits do not help. And, to come back to Ada, this is also relevant in the language context. It helps to be technically better, but you need a certain amount of marketing and "drive". So long, Steffen -- Steffen Huber LambdaComm System - Welcome to Trollinger Country Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Steffen Huber @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-11-03 5:11 ` CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) Robert I. Eachus 5 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes: > I actually think this error is made in HDTV today, for most > people resolution is not that important. Speaking as someone > with high end HDTV equipment, I will say that most people > don't really care about the difference between DVD (480p) > and HDTV (720p or 1050i). The wide screen is important, but > in my view the practice that is appearing of broadcasting > 16 x 9 material in 1050i is a mistake, it would be better > to broadcast more channels at 480p. Obviously you and I differ regarding how well they do at filling the existing channels and how more channels might affect that, but continuing that line would be quite off topic. > Why is this relevant to comp.lang.ada? Well a lot of our > discussion and support of Ada is based on alledged technical > superiority, I say alledged because it is not so easy to prove > superiority in this field. What we need to be sure of is that > the factors that we stress are indeed those that are important > and real. A good point, rarely considered here. It needs a buzz-word :-) > I recently saw someone say in an influential list on Ada that > they thought that the fact that Ada had a better defined > standard was a crucial element to Ada's success. My own feeling > is that even if this were true (it is not!) then it would not > be terribly important, and if we concentrated on that aspect > to the exclusion of others, we would definitely be making the > beta mistake, and even if we DID achieve a better defined > standard, it is not what would impress the real world. I would say that Ada has a more widely accepted standard than many of the alternatives. The absolute number of Pascal compilers that attempt to implement the full Extended Pascal standard seems to be about 2. Certainly the percentage is frightening. I tried some conversion software to regularly transform Pascal code from one dialect to another, and it was a burdensome experience. > What arguments would impress management. Well try this on > for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly > and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could > (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be > interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical > advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. But in other circles the only possible technical advantage that could play is "time to market". I believe for the slight change of "time to market with a defect rate less than X" could be won by Ada for suitably small X. Not all circles will care, but some will care who do not care about CMM. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <1FwFbWdX$ENE@eisner.decus.org>, Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) wrote: > In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes: > > > Obviously you and I differ regarding how well they do at > filling the existing channels and how more channels might > affect that but continuing that line would be quite off topic. True, but since you continued it, I will too :-) Right now I get 1.25 HDTV 1050i channels, I would definitely prefer more 480p channels, it will be a while before HDTV is subject to channel bloat :-) > > > Why is this relevant to comp.lang.ada? Well a lot of our > > discussion and support of Ada is based on alledged technical > > superiority, I say alledged because it is not so easy to prove > > superiority in this field. What we need to be sure of is that > > the factors that we stress are indeed those that are important > > and real. > > A good point, rarely considered here. It needs a buzz-word Suggestions welcome! > > > I recently saw someone say in an influential list on Ada that > > they thought that the fact that Ada had a better defined > > standard was a crucial element to Ada's success. My own feeling > > is that even if this were true (it is not!) then it would not > > be terribly important, and if we concentrated on that aspect > > to the exclusion of others, we would definitely be making the > > beta mistake, and even if we DID achieve a better defined > > standard, it is not what would impress the real world. > > I would say that Ada has a more widely accepted standard than > many of the alternatives. The absolute number of Pascal compilers > that attempt to implement the full Extended Pascal standard seems > to be about 2. Certainly the percentage is frightening. I tried > some conversion software to regularly transform Pascal code from > one dialect to another, and it was a burdensome experience. > > > What arguments would impress management. Well try this on > > for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly > > and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could > > (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be > > interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical > > advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. > > But in other circles the only possible technical advantage that > could play is "time to market". I believe for the slight change > of "time to market with a defect rate less than X" could be won > by Ada for suitably small X. Not all circles will care, but some > will care who do not care about CMM Absolutely! I was not suggesting that this be the ONLY or even MAIN reason for pushing Ada, just one more interesting one that will be relevant for certainly circles Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-11-03 5:11 ` CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) Robert I. Eachus 5 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8sg6g2$eur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert says... > >In article <39EB662D.F2C8B55B@acm.org>, > Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org> wrote: > [ clip ... ] >What arguments would impress management. Well try this on >for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly >and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could >(and have) written papers to support this, but I would be >interested in other people's viewpoints. ADA is in the meantime based on a IEC standard ... but who is controlling the validation rules ?? I can only find an IEC paper for the issue 'Conformity assessment of a language processor', 25 pages. It is from 1999!! I wonder when will the validation games are over?? =:-/ Armin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar ` (4 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-11-03 5:11 ` Robert I. Eachus 2000-11-03 5:34 ` Ken Garlington 5 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert I. Eachus @ 2000-11-03 5:11 UTC (permalink / raw) (This grew from an endorsement of Robert Dewar's idea into a rant on the shortsightedness of American corporate management, in the guise of a discussion of designing CPU chips.) Robert Dewar wrote: > > What arguments would impress management. Well try this on > for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly > and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could > (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be > interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical > advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. I'm not sure, and I am not sure that there are many managements that understand what a level 3 CMM will do for them other than check off some government contracting box. But take a look at Intel and AMD right now. Intel has put a lot of effort into getting a chip design and manufacturing capability that is repeatable. By doing so they have become one of the largest companies in the world. And take my word for it, Intel is better at designing chips--not architectures--than almost anyone else in the world. Up until a year ago, Intel used AMD as a footstool, and kicked them from time to time when Intel thought AMD was getting uppity. Then came the Athlon. The Athlon didn't come out of nowhere. The design team that developed it previously developed the K6 and K6/2 processors. A few months before the Athlon was announced, an Intel executive talked about how in 4Q2000, Intel would be introducing the Willamette at 1.1 GHz, and the fastest Athlon would be running at 666 MHz. AMD introduced the Athlon at four speeds, 500, 550, 600, and 650 MHz. Ooops! Intel's fastest processor at the time was running at 600 MHz. Wouldn't have mattered, except that the Athlon was faster per clock at floating-point, and had a much faster memory bus, had much bigger L1 caches, etc. Even at the same clock speed it was a much better chip, all around. AMD then took this new architecture, and introduced the K75 which was the first 1 GHz chip, the Thunderbird, with on-chip L2 cache, and a little brother the Spitfire (Duron), that walked all over the Celeron. (Right now, AMD is not competing with the Celerons--they have repositioned the Duron against the Pentium III.) AMD this week announced a second 1.2 Ghz chip with a 266 MHz Front side bus, a chipset to allow DDR (double data rate) SDRAM to be used with the Athlon and Duron, and missed their first scheduled product introduction this year. They decided to wait a week or so and announce the newest Athlon core, the Mustang, at Comdex. (The chip was initially scheduled for an October release.) What has all this got to do with the SEI CMM? Well, after twenty years in the wilderness, AMD finally realized that what they needed was not a better product than Intel, they needed a better process for developing new products. The "Classic" Athlon (at 0.25 micron) was released about the same time as Intel's new Coppermine (0.18 core) for the Pentium III. Then came the K75 (Pluto) core (at 0.18 micron), the Thunderbird (again 0.18 but some with copper interconnects), and Mustang (again 0.18 copper) is the first of the next generation of AMD chips to be announced, and will be announced next week. A week or to later Intel will announce their new Pentium chip, the Willamette. So AMD will have gone through three new architecture releases in the time it takes Intel to do one. But that is not exactly true. Intel has more than one product design team, and expects a major new design like the Willamette to take up to four years. Unfortunately, Willamette took longer than that. (And Merced/Itanium has taken so long that it is obsolete before it is released. Intel is hoping that McKinley will change that at some point next year.) Ah, you say, the K75 and Thunderbird were just minor tweaks. In one sense true, in another irrelevant. The difference between Katmai and Coppermine is about the same as the difference between the K75 and the T-bird. The Mustang is probably a bit more of a change from the T-bird, but the next core after the Mustang is the Sledgehammer, and it is at least as innovative as the original Pentium Pro. Of course, the Sledgehammer is not on schedule for a late 2001 release--it is a little early since it taped out this week. Between Mustang and Sledgehammer, there will be the Palomino desktop chip, and a mobile variant, and the Morgan (new Duron) and its mobile version. That's right, AMD is in the midst of announcing more major new products in the October to February time period than ever before in their history, so they cleaned up the next major project early and got it out of the way. (AMD may or may not also release the Clawhammer somewhere in there. Clawhammer is a prototype x86-64 chip that may be in house only. But I heard rumors they might merge the ISA enhansements from the Clawhammer into the Palomino. How's that for reuse.) Intel is hoping to catch up to AMD next year. But they haven't gotten the message yet. Right now there is a lot of talk about whether the Willamette will be able to match the Athlon when it is released, or if they will have to wait for the 1.7 GHz or 2.0 GHz versions. But AMD will have a new (and from what I have heard) much faster chip next week. The Willamette may not even hold the clock speed record when shipped. Jerry Saunders' (AMD's CEO) last word on the subject was new higher speeds every few weeks, 1.5 GHz by January. Right now Willamette is expected to be announced at 1.4 and 1.5 GHz on Nov. 20th. The Mustang is expected to be announced at 1.4 GHz and several other speeds next week. The speculation is on the "several other speeds. ;-) How many billions of dollars has working on their development process been worth to AMD? (My guess is about 1 billion cash, and 10 billion in market cap so far.) And how much has lack of a better process cost Intel. (Not that much so far, maybe 100 billion of market cap or so, but wait 'til next year.) Who else has been focusing on process recently? Well, Jack Welsh has been doing it for years at GE. Six Sigma is almost a corporate religion now. And it really is the case, when some process doesn't work right, they don't brush it off, they look at what can be done to fix the process--if it really is broken. Given all that, wouldn't you think that more company executives would focus their energies on improving internal processes? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) 2000-11-03 5:11 ` CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) Robert I. Eachus @ 2000-11-03 5:34 ` Ken Garlington 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ken Garlington @ 2000-11-03 5:34 UTC (permalink / raw) "Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3A024909.4DEC49AA@earthlink.net... : (This grew from an endorsement of Robert Dewar's idea into a rant on the : shortsightedness of American corporate management, in the guise of a : discussion of designing CPU chips.) : : Robert Dewar wrote: : > : > What arguments would impress management. Well try this on : > for size "Ada will help you achieve level 3 CMM more rapidly : > and realiably". I suspect this is definitely true, and I could : > (and have) written papers to support this, but I would be : > interested in other people's viewpoints. There's a tecnical : > advantage that definitely WOULD play in some circles. Our company process (which was rated at SW-CMM level 4 last year) makes no recommendations as to source language, and in fact the projects included in the formal assessment used a variety of languages. Ada could potentially assist in performing SW-CMM level 5 optimizing activities, however. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ken Garlington 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 3 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko: > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > code) Ok, this is done: GNAT. > and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally. > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming > (even C++ is too high). If you can do high and abstract things, it doesn't mean that you can't do system level programming. Ada provides it, and it is easy. Maybe you make a confusion with Pascal which doesn't provide it by default. > And yet it is not as portable and distributable > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. It's a personal taste - nothing to discuss. However C (and decendents) and Pascal share some archaisms, like the lack of true modularity or obligation of enclosing every group of more than 1 instruction by '{','}' (resp. "begin","end" in Pascal). > Of course, those are > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I > don't say that those opinions are absolute right. > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time > until a) and b) is done. Maybe your conditions are more advanced than you think - and yes, it is a very good way to kill time! ______________________________________________________ Gautier -- http://members.nbci.com/gdemont/gsoft.htm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX Gautier @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 3 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: mjsilva @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com>, Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. You bought -a- book!? You don't state that you've used Ada, or even that you know it, but only that you bought -a- book. And some years ago at that -- maybe it didn't even cover the current standard (Ada 95 vs. Ada 83). > If someone manages to > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > code) What evidence do you have that there are no good compilers? BTW, compilers aren't portable. Ada the language, OTOH, allows one to write very portable code. And there are compiler implementations that produce runtime code at least as efficient as equivalent C runtime code. >...and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > thing, Since when does one need to know "the whole damn thing" to use any programming language or other complex tool? > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming What low-level system-programming functionality is missing in Ada? In fact Ada has more low-level functionality than C or C++. It was, after all, originally designed for -embedded- applications. Mike Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > > In article <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com>, > Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: > > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. > Couple > > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. > > You bought -a- book!? You don't state that you've used Ada, or even > that you know it, but only that you bought -a- book. And some years > ago at that -- maybe it didn't even cover the current standard (Ada 95 > vs. Ada 83). > Sure, I bought a book simply to have it collect some dust. That's very reasonable assumption given that such fat books are usually rather expensive. > Since when does one need to know "the whole damn thing" to use any > programming language or other complex tool? > Since the time it became obvious that if you don't want the whole Ada you might as well go with C/C++. > > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level > programming > > What low-level system-programming functionality is missing in Ada? In > fact Ada has more low-level functionality than C or C++. It was, after > all, originally designed for -embedded- applications. > I did not say anything is missing. I said that it is 'too high' which should mean there is just too much stuff to bear along with what you really need in most cases. Note that strictly speaking I never said Ada is wrong thing in general, I just stated that it is not good for my personal taste. My original intention was not to denounce Ada, but to say that pissing on C++ does not do any good for Ada. I see, nobody seems to want to continue the wedding analogy, but many are happy to let off some steam on me no matter how many disclaimers I put. I guess it was mistake to give you guys such an easy target :) - Igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:39 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Lao Xiao Hai @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko wrote: > Note that strictly speaking I never said Ada is wrong thing in general, > I just stated that it is not good for my personal taste. My original > intention was not to denounce Ada, but to say that pissing on C++ does > not do any good for Ada. I see, nobody seems to want to continue the > wedding analogy, but many are happy to let off some steam on me no > matter how many disclaimers I put. I guess it was mistake to give you > guys such an easy target :) Eezveneetye paizhalsta, Igor. "You are not the target" It is not you who is the easy target, but C++. Also, as for using it as a receptacle relieving for bladder content, you may be correct that I was not entirely fair in my earlier posting. It does bring a certain amount of perverse glee, though. We all have our opinions based on our own experiences. For me, C++ is the peanut brittle of programmig languages. Peanut brittle is easy to break apart, gets stuck between your teeth, and causes tooth decay. While a few C++ programmers may practice good software hygiene, it seems most do not. Consequently, most of the C++ code I see is reminiscent of the aforementioned peanut brittle. On the positive side, C++ used intelligently, can be engaged in the creation of relatively good software. I have actually witnessed this. Unfortunately, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. IMHO, if the software really must work properly all the time, Ada is better choice. To decide that Ada is bad because it looks too much like Pascal is a bit short-sighted. Of course, syntax does make a difference and we all have our preferences in that regard. However, it seems to me we should be making the decision on the basis of quality and reliability of our end product rather than on the popularity of, or the pulchritude of the language tools. When considered in that context, I have to choose Ada, even though I personally like Smalltalk and Eiffel. Richard Riehle ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai @ 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-11-03 0:00 ` mark_lundquist 2000-10-17 0:39 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: mjsilva @ 2000-10-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EB42B1.A14BDCB6@motorola.com>, Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > > > > In article <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com>, > > Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: > > > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. > > Couple > > > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. > > > > You bought -a- book!? You don't state that you've used Ada, or even > > that you know it, but only that you bought -a- book. And some years > > ago at that -- maybe it didn't even cover the current standard (Ada 95 > > vs. Ada 83). > > > > Sure, I bought a book simply to have it collect some dust. That's very > reasonable assumption given that such fat books are usually rather > expensive. I've got plenty of books collecting dust. I didn't buy them for that purpose, but that's the end result anyway. Rather than rely on readers' assumptions why not be more clear in your writing? > > > Since when does one need to know "the whole damn thing" to use any > > programming language or other complex tool? > > > > Since the time it became obvious that if you don't want the whole Ada > you might as well go with C/C++. When it comes to e.g. C++ do you feel equally compelled to know "the whole damn thing"? > > > > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level > > programming > > > > What low-level system-programming functionality is missing in Ada? In > > fact Ada has more low-level functionality than C or C++. It was, after > > all, originally designed for -embedded- applications. > > > > I did not say anything is missing. I said that it is 'too high' which > should mean there is just too much stuff to bear along with what you > really need in most cases. OK, what 'too high' stuff must you bear in order to do system-level programming in Ada? > > Note that strictly speaking I never said Ada is wrong thing in general, > I just stated that it is not good for my personal taste. My original > intention was not to denounce Ada, but to say that pissing on C++ does > not do any good for Ada. I see, nobody seems to want to continue the > wedding analogy, but many are happy to let off some steam on me no > matter how many disclaimers I put. I guess it was mistake to give you > guys such an easy target :) If you'd like to have a serious discussion on the relative merits of C++ and Ada I'm sure this group can rise to the occasion. Informed criticism, BTW, is not the same as "pissing". Mike Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva @ 2000-11-03 0:00 ` mark_lundquist 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: mark_lundquist @ 2000-11-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8sfm52$f4$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > In article <39EB42B1.A14BDCB6@motorola.com>, > Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > > mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > > > > > > In article <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com>, > > > Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: > > > > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level > > > programming > > > > > > What low-level system-programming functionality is missing in Ada? > In > > > fact Ada has more low-level functionality than C or C++. It was, > after > > > all, originally designed for -embedded- applications. > > > > > > > I did not say anything is missing. I said that it is 'too high' which > > should mean there is just too much stuff to bear along with what you > > really need in most cases. > > OK, what 'too high' stuff must you bear in order to do system-level > programming in Ada? I've written device drivers, bootloader and debug monitor code, and a full TCP/IP stack in Ada, and I have to say I really like Ada for system-level programming. Even in a "system level" project you are going to have some bits that are really down on the bare iron, and then the rest which is really your logic or whatever and is not particularly "system-level", except by virtue of being part of something bigger (like an OS) that you do consider to be "system- level"! And for all the rest of those bits, being able to program at an appropriate level of abstraction is quite nice. For the "bare iron" bits, on the other hand, I really find nothing in Ada that gets in the way or is "too abstract". It's just not there. This is from my experience of actually using it. The language will, however, tend to get in your way if you insist on a C-style way of doing things, so you have to learn how to do it the Ada way. It's also true that the Ada locutions are less cryptic and more verbose, which until you get the feel of it may make it feel "too abstract" -- but really it's not. I haven't really done any system-level programming in C or C++, but to be fair I think a fair bit of any programming project in C (and even C++) becomes indistinguishable from system-level progamming. An example would be whenever you have to deal with char [] strings (and you do have to deal with them, even in C++, because while you might prefer to use String objects instead, at some point you usually have to interface w/ pieces of code that did *not* use String!) Another example is when application code has to call an OS for which C is the natural binding. In Ada the virtually-system-level bits are still there where you have to deal with the OS, but if you're using a thick binding (like POSIX) then the low-level bits are hidden for you in the binding. Mark Lundquist Rational Software Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:39 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 5:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-17 0:39 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EB42B1.A14BDCB6@motorola.com>, Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > Sure, I bought a book simply to have it collect some dust. > That's very reasonable assumption given that such fat books > are usually rather expensive. One is tempted to suppose a smiley is meant here, but other evidence in Igor's posts make it clear that he certainly has NOT read an Ada book carefully, so who knows? > > > Since when does one need to know "the whole damn thing" to > > use any > > programming language or other complex tool? > > > > Since the time it became obvious that if you don't want the > whole Ada you might as well go with C/C++. Things seem to become obvious to you in mysterious ways, certainly objective information does not seem to be an ingrediant in this process. The above statement is complete nonsense. Actually in my experience, Ada programs in general tend to use far more of Ada than is true in the case of C++. I see lots and lots of C++ programs that just completely ignore very important parts of the language, including for example, exceptions, name spaces, and the standard template library, and indeed inheritance for many programs. > I did not say anything is missing. I said that it is 'too > high' which should mean there is just too much stuff to bear > along with what you really need in most cases. I am beginning to think this is all a big joke, I think that it is likely that Igor is just having fun in trolling. Since it is hard to believe that anyone could be this blatant in forming bogus conclusions with no data (note that Igor has not even given a TRACE of evidence that he knows anything about Ada other than how to properly case the name of the language). > Note that strictly speaking I never said Ada is wrong thing in > general, Given that you don't know Ada, that's probably wise, one of the few wise decisions represented here. > I just stated that it is not good for my personal taste. Of course you have no way of knowing this, but I find many people find that it is convenient to dismiss languages without knowing them (and before the Ada folks join in righteous agreement, hands up all those who are sure COBOL is junk but don't know it!) > My original intention was not to denounce Ada, but to say that > pissing on C++ does not do any good for Ada. I am reminded of Lieberman saying in a recent speach that he would not criticize Bush, but would criticize his record. It is definitely a bad idea to just generally denounce C++ without knowing it, and those who do, don't help and just make themselves look silly (as Igor does when he generally denounces Ada -- although if this is a clever troll, then hats off, because it is very well done :-) On the other hand if you DO know C++ well, it is quite in bounds to specifically point out what is wrong with it. If you really *do* know both languages, this is not hard to do! > I see, nobody seems to want to continue the > wedding analogy, but many are happy to let off some steam on > me no matter how many disclaimers I put. I guess it was > mistake to give you guys such an easy target :) Not if you were deliberately trolling :-) Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:39 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-10-17 5:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek 0 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 5:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote: > > One is tempted to suppose a smiley is meant here, but other > evidence in Igor's posts make it clear that he certainly has > NOT read an Ada book carefully, so who knows? > I did read it and not once. And yes, it was useful reading and I had enjoyed some parts of it. And no, I did not use Ada in a serious project. To give you some more background, I knew Pascal before C, PL/1 and Fortran before Pascal and IBM360 assembler before that. I also did straight machine-code programming occasionally including some esoteric architectures with 45 bit word, which I believe still control some russian satellites. > Things seem to become obvious to you in mysterious ways, > certainly objective information does not seem to be an > ingrediant in this process. The main ingredient is a magic crystal ball which I carefully hide in my dungeon. I found one back in Siberia's forests while walking my pet wolves trained to kill treacherous western invaders. It came to me there clear as holy shining that Ada must be one of them, being made by DoD. Also, 'Ada' sounds a lot like 'hell' in russian. > The above statement is complete > nonsense. You don't ever say 'IMHO'. You must have another crystal ball, bigger than mine :( > Actually in my experience, Ada programs in general tend to > use far more of Ada than is true in the case of C++. I see > lots and lots of C++ programs that just completely ignore > very important parts of the language, including for example, > exceptions, name spaces, and the standard template library, > and indeed inheritance for many programs. > One could blame you for being unjust here. There are bad programs in C++ and there are bad programs in Ada. Nothing in Ada prevents one from writing those, just as nothing in Ada makes all Ada programs bad. Same story for C++. You however dare to say that more C++ programs are bad than Ada programs. Perhaps, but then it is mostly because there are simply far more C++ programs in total than Ada programs. > I am beginning to think this is all a big joke, I think that > it is likely that Igor is just having fun in trolling. Well, I have been told in the middle of this thread that trolling about C++ does indeed make a lot of fun for Ada supporters. So, may be I'm trolling too, and may be not, but if I'm not I may start without notice because I used to be a good troller and have to support my reputation once in a while. > Since > it is hard to believe that anyone could be this blatant in > forming bogus conclusions with no data (note that Igor has > not even given a TRACE of evidence that he knows anything > about Ada other than how to properly case the name of the > language). Yes I know her name. Not sure if she'd liked what DoD have done with it. > I am reminded of Lieberman saying in a recent speach that he > would not criticize Bush, but would criticize his record. It For that matter this whole thread reminds me those arguments of respective candidates. Everyone knows that no matter what the hell they say people will choose based of their human sympathies, yet everyone exercises in denouncing each other. But those folks at least have a clear goal and timetable and they know one of them will sure as hell win, unlike us here ;) > is definitely a bad idea to just generally denounce C++ > without knowing it, and those who do, don't help and just > make themselves look silly (as Igor does when he generally > denounces Ada -- although if this is a clever troll, then > hats off, because it is very well done :-) > Ouch, I have earned a compliment for trolling, perhaps I should stick to it as it seems to be what I'm best at =:> > Not if you were deliberately trolling :-) > I was not, originally. If you take time to read my first post it was in responce to rather reckless and unsupported rant about C++, made in quite insulting manner for true C++ adepts, but NOT cross-posted to comp.lang.c++. Yet I still was pretty careful to say only few words about my personal _perception_ of Ada and I have put a big disclaimer there. I had no idea what a can of worms that will open. Ada must be as alive as Elvis, looking at this chorus of passionate fans. But at least Elvis was The King when he walked the streets ;) - Igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 5:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko: > Ada must be as alive as Elvis, looking at this chorus of passionate > fans. But at least Elvis was The King when he walked the streets ;) He _is_ still the King - I'm sure I have seen him yesterday in the street! Gautier - an enthusiast, not a fan: if you know something really better than Ada for my needs, write me ;-). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Armin Steinhoff @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39ECAE97.4BAA8BBE@maths.unine.ch>, Gautier says... > >Igor Kovalenko: > >> Ada must be as alive as Elvis, looking at this chorus of passionate >> fans. But at least Elvis was The King when he walked the streets ;) > >He _is_ still the King - I'm sure I have seen him yesterday >in the street! > >Gautier - an enthusiast, As a real enthusiast ... I would port GNAT to QNX RTP :-) > not a fan: if you know something really >better than Ada for my needs, write me ;-). OK ... let us know what your needs are. Armin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 5:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 1 sibling, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: aek @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: >wolves trained to kill treacherous western invaders. It came to me there >clear as holy shining that Ada must be one of them, being made by DoD. >Also, 'Ada' sounds a lot like 'hell' in russian. That reminds me an old arictle in a leading Soviet newspaper where the author described new programming language Ada, which was sponsored by Pentagon, as "the language of thermonuclear hell". Surely, that author tried to point out on the same imagined proximity. But in fact, Ada isn't sound like the Russian word for "hell". The latter has 2 letters, not 3, and it isn't even "ad" - that "ad" would be straightforward transliteration, but the Russian word for the hell is pronounced as "ud" would be pronounced in English. Moreover, "Ada" is fully legitimate woman's name in Russia, anf not too rare. And although in Russian that name is pronounced much more closely to the "ud", nobody in Russia associates it with the hell. Just to prevent misiformation, Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia \x1a Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 1 sibling, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Now I'm being taught russian, too :( Just when I thought to scare away some of the devils... FYI, 'Ada' pronounced in russian way sounds exactly like corresponding part of 'gates of hell' said in russian, but that was not the point. What's up with you, lost your humor sense, or what? You should spend some quality time in Siberia, it is good for mind integrity. - igor aek@vib.usr.pu.ru wrote: > > Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com> wrote: > >wolves trained to kill treacherous western invaders. It came to me > there > >clear as holy shining that Ada must be one of them, being made by DoD. > >Also, 'Ada' sounds a lot like 'hell' in russian. > > That reminds me an old arictle in a leading Soviet newspaper where the > author > described new programming language Ada, which was sponsored by > Pentagon, as > "the language of thermonuclear hell". Surely, that author tried to > point out > on the same imagined proximity. > But in fact, Ada isn't sound like the Russian word for "hell". The > latter > has 2 letters, not 3, and it isn't even "ad" - that "ad" would be > straightforward > transliteration, but the Russian word for the hell is pronounced as > "ud" would > be pronounced in English. > Moreover, "Ada" is fully legitimate woman's name in Russia, anf not > too rare. > And although in Russian that name is pronounced much more closely to > the "ud", > nobody in Russia associates it with the hell. > > Just to prevent misiformation, > > Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru > Saint-Petersburg > Russia > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39ECAD59.20C486B@motorola.com>, Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > What's up with you, lost your humor sense, or what? You should spend > some quality time in Siberia, it is good for mind integrity. Ahhh. I can just never get enough of that good old Soviet humor. :-) -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message news:39ECAD59.20C486B@motorola.com... <snip> > What's up with you, lost your humor sense, or what? You should spend > some quality time in Siberia, it is good for mind integrity. There are only so many trees one could count before losing one's mind... :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I did not mean for him to 'count trees'. I lived and worked there (east side of Baikal lake) and that had its bright moments. In reasonable dozes yes, it might be good for mind integrity. I have to say though, in Soviet Army that place was usually referred to as 'ZabVO' which should mean 'behind-baikal-military-district' but we treated it as 'ZABud-Vernutsya-Obratno' which means 'forget to return back' ;) Indeed, humor was good sometimes. - igor Pat Rogers wrote: > > "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message > news:39ECAD59.20C486B@motorola.com... > <snip> > > > What's up with you, lost your humor sense, or what? You should spend > > some quality time in Siberia, it is good for mind integrity. > > There are only so many trees one could count before losing one's > mind... :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message news:39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com... <snip> > Indeed, humor was good sometimes. I miss the jokes about the Soviet rulers; it seems the new leaders don't evoke the same need to laugh (to keep from crying, no doubt). (Although there are a few jokes about Yeltsin's drinking.) You know, for example the one about Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and Stalin riding on a train together, and it breaks down. First they go to Stalin, who order the engineers shot. The train starts again (mysteriously) but eventually breaks down again. They go to Khrushchev, who orders the previously-shot engineers to be rehabilitated and returned to work. The trains starts again, and eventually stops again. Brezhnev says (indistinctly) "What train?". Same thing occurs, and Gorbachev says "Everybody out and push!". What's an amateur Sovietologist (as opposed to Kremliniologist; I had no favorites) to do when the Soviets go away? --- Patrick Rogers Consulting and Training in: http://www.classwide.com Deadline Schedulability Analysis progers@classwide.com Software Fault Tolerance (281)648-3165 Real-Time/OO Languages Adam ... does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant. Mark Twain ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 0 siblings, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Pat Rogers wrote: > > "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message > news:39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com... > > <snip> > > > Indeed, humor was good sometimes. > > I miss the jokes about the Soviet rulers; it seems the new leaders > don't evoke the same need to laugh (to keep from crying, no doubt). > (Although there are a few jokes about Yeltsin's drinking.) You know, > for example the one about Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and Stalin > riding on a train together, and it breaks down. First they go to > Stalin, who order the engineers shot. The train starts again > (mysteriously) but eventually breaks down again. They go to > Khrushchev, who orders the previously-shot engineers to be > rehabilitated and returned to work. The trains starts again, and > eventually stops again. Brezhnev says (indistinctly) "What train?". > Same thing occurs, and Gorbachev says "Everybody out and push!". > Two inhabitants of remote north-east Siberia (called chukchas, they are close relatives of eskimoses) sit down on a shore fishing. One starts to tell a joke about soviet rulers, the other listens and after a while says: 'you should be careful telling this kind of jokes. one might go to an exile for them'. > What's an amateur Sovietologist (as opposed to Kremliniologist; I had > no favorites) to do when the Soviets go away? I noticed Hollywood switched to chineese. Try jokes about their leaders then ;) - igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message news:39EDBB20.1C2349FD@motorola.com... > Pat Rogers wrote: > > > > "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message > > news:39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com... > > > > <snip> > > > > > Indeed, humor was good sometimes. > > > > I miss the jokes about the Soviet rulers; it seems the new leaders > > don't evoke the same need to laugh (to keep from crying, no doubt). > > (Although there are a few jokes about Yeltsin's drinking.) You know, > > for example the one about Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and Stalin > > riding on a train together, and it breaks down. First they go to > > Stalin, who order the engineers shot. The train starts again > > (mysteriously) but eventually breaks down again. They go to > > Khrushchev, who orders the previously-shot engineers to be > > rehabilitated and returned to work. The trains starts again, and > > eventually stops again. Brezhnev says (indistinctly) "What train?". > > Same thing occurs, and Gorbachev says "Everybody out and push!". > > > > Two inhabitants of remote north-east Siberia (called chukchas, they are > close relatives of eskimoses) sit down on a shore fishing. One starts to > tell a joke about soviet rulers, the other listens and after a while > says: 'you should be careful telling this kind of jokes. one might go to > an exile for them'. :-) :-) > > What's an amateur Sovietologist (as opposed to Kremliniologist; I had > > no favorites) to do when the Soviets go away? > > I noticed Hollywood switched to chineese. Try jokes about their leaders > then ;) For some, that situation is more cause for crying than laughing. And now I think we've taken this thread sufficiently far astray... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Igor Kovalenko wrote: > Indeed, humor was good sometimes. Humor or not, my impression of Siberia is that it is a place that is cold. I grew up in Michigan and that's a place that gets reasonably cold - and lots of snow! My address has been in Florida for a number of years now and I intend to keep it that way. Now to segue back to Ada..... :-) While Ada definitely has its roots in the US DoD and is still used a lot within the defense industry, I don't think its fair to characterize it as "the language of thermonuclear hell" (see back up a few layers in this thread). At least not anymore. It is used in many non-DoD related applications. When I was with Pratt & Whitney, we had so much success with building out military engine controls in Ada that our whole process eventually got adopted by our bretheren in the commercial engine business up in Connecticut. (It also gets cold up there, which is why I no longer work at Pratt! :-) We were able to demonstrate with metrics that we had improved our productivity to over double what it was and that we reduced our defects by a factor of four. And this was hard-realtime, mission critical software, so we had lots of the same design constraints people would have doing operating system work. It gets hard to argue with that kind of success, so the commercial side eventually adopted what we were doing on the military side. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Marin David Condic @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com>, Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > I did not mean for him to 'count trees'. I lived and worked there > (east side of Baikal lake) and that had its bright moments. In > reasonable dozes yes, it might be good for mind integrity. I have to Ahhh. I take back my joke then. Lake Baikal is supposed to be beautiful. It used to be the cleanest freshwater lake in the world. I think it holds something like 1/5th of all the freshwater in the world. You have to realize that in the US (and possibly western Europe too, I don't know) "Sibera" is known primarily as the place dissedents got sent to work in Soviet prison camps. Even for those of us who realize it is a very large and diverse area, the first image that comes to mind is prisoners working with pick-axes in a snowstorm. I'm sure'll get better eventually. -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ted Dennison wrote: > > In article <39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com>, > Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > > I did not mean for him to 'count trees'. I lived and worked there > > (east side of Baikal lake) and that had its bright moments. In > > reasonable dozes yes, it might be good for mind integrity. I have to > > Ahhh. I take back my joke then. Lake Baikal is supposed to be beautiful. > It used to be the cleanest freshwater lake in the world. I think it > holds something like 1/5th of all the freshwater in the world. > Because it is bloody deep for a lake. Around 1000 meters (3000 feet). It is cold because of that, too. > You have to realize that in the US (and possibly western Europe too, I > don't know) "Sibera" is known primarily as the place dissedents got sent > to work in Soviet prison camps. Even for those of us who realize it is a > very large and diverse area, the first image that comes to mind is > prisoners working with pick-axes in a snowstorm. > > I'm sure'll get better eventually. Siberia is everything east to Ural mounains. Southern parts of it are warm enough for wild grape to grow in the forests (it has nice but weird taste reminding some subtropical fruit). Generally, it can get quite hot in the summer, above (30C, 90F) and damned cold in the winter (-40C, -50F). One part of it can get as cold as -70C (-110F), and that is not good for mind integrity anymore ;) - Igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message news:8skcoc$s0i$1@nnrp1.deja.com... > In article <39ECE5C1.918BCF3B@motorola.com>, > Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote: > > I did not mean for him to 'count trees'. I lived and worked there > > (east side of Baikal lake) and that had its bright moments. In > > reasonable dozes yes, it might be good for mind integrity. I have to > > Ahhh. I take back my joke then. Lake Baikal is supposed to be beautiful. > It used to be the cleanest freshwater lake in the world. I think it > holds something like 1/5th of all the freshwater in the world. > > You have to realize that in the US (and possibly western Europe too, I > don't know) "Sibera" is known primarily as the place dissedents got sent > to work in Soviet prison camps. Even for those of us who realize it is a > very large and diverse area, the first image that comes to mind is > prisoners working with pick-axes in a snowstorm. Before the soviets, the Czars would exile people there, but not to hard labor. They had nothing to do, thus the 'counting trees' saying. --- Patrick Rogers Consulting and Training in: http://www.classwide.com Deadline Schedulability Analysis progers@classwide.com Software Fault Tolerance (281)648-3165 Real-Time/OO Languages Adam ... does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant. Mark Twain ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers @ 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 0 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Pat Rogers wrote: > > Before the soviets, the Czars would exile people there, but not to > hard labor. They had nothing to do, thus the 'counting trees' saying. > Yes, but they still sent people to hard labor too, which was not exile but 'katorga'. Criminals went to katorga, politicals went to exile, unless they were criminals too. Which was of course not fair to criminals, so bolsheviks started to send everyone to katorga without discrimination, even though Lenin himself got just exile for himself ;) - igor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > Moreover, "Ada" is fully legitimate woman's name in Russia, and not > too rare. > And although in Russian that name is pronounced much more closely to > the "ud", > nobody in Russia associates it with the hell. For non Russian-speaking people, I recommend to read in the famous novel "Ada or ardor" by Vladimir Nabokov how to spell it correctly, "a la russe". _____________________________________________ Gautier -- http://members.xoom.com/gdemont/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 1 sibling, 1 reply; 66+ messages in thread From: mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com>, Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > reconsider the benefits of Ada. Is anyone aware of instances of "buyer's remorse" after switching from Ada to Brand X? BTW, it's looking like my efforts at convincing our industrial controller customer to go with Ada rather than C or C++ may pay off... Mike Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Buyer's Remorse? (was Re: Ada and QNX) mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ada and QNX mjsilva 0 siblings, 2 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8shvjd$sa6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > In article <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com>, > Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > > reconsider the benefits of Ada. > > Is anyone aware of instances of "buyer's remorse" after switching from > Ada to Brand X? I'm aware of quite a few instances of "developer's remorse", but as that wasn't from anyone who made the decision, I don't think its what you are looking for. -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Buyer's Remorse? (was Re: Ada and QNX) 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ada and QNX mjsilva 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8si17d$tul$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote: > In article <8shvjd$sa6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, > mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > > In article <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com>, > > Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > > > > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > > > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > > > reconsider the benefits of Ada. > > > > Is anyone aware of instances of "buyer's remorse" after switching from > > Ada to Brand X? > > I'm aware of quite a few instances of "developer's remorse", but as that > wasn't from anyone who made the decision, I don't think its what you are > looking for. (This is the same reply I posted a few minutes ago, but with a more informative header) I would be interested in hearing about "developer's remorse" as well. What I'm looking for is any info regarding projects that probably should be using Ada but have chosen Brand X instead, and whether or not Brand X is proving to be a better, equal or worse choice. BTW, Brand X could be any language, but I suspect it would usually be C or C++. Mike Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Buyer's Remorse? (was Re: Ada and QNX) mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 1 sibling, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: mjsilva @ 2000-10-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <8si17d$tul$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote: > In article <8shvjd$sa6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, > mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote: > > In article <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com>, > > Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > > > > As people seek to abandon Ada in favor of the glitzy languages so > > > popular in Dr. Dobbs discover how dreadful those languages are, they > > > reconsider the benefits of Ada. > > > > Is anyone aware of instances of "buyer's remorse" after switching from > > Ada to Brand X? > > I'm aware of quite a few instances of "developer's remorse", but as that > wasn't from anyone who made the decision, I don't think its what you are > looking for. I would be interested in hearing about "developer's remorse" as well. What I'm looking for is any info regarding projects that probably should be using Ada but have chosen Brand X instead, and whether or not Brand X is proving to be a better, equal or worse choice. BTW, Brand X could be any language, but I suspect it would usually be C or C++. Mike Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 2000-09-30 0:00 ` gdemont 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: gdemont @ 2000-09-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer from the > old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. DEAD. I think it is very dependent on the countries and the usage area. Ada has - fortunately - spread outside its "US-DoD-embedded" context. It may be sad for the US taxpayers... Anyway, many thanks! ______________________________________________________ Gautier -- http://members.nbci.com/gdemont/gsoft.htm Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-09-30 0:00 ` gdemont @ 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2000-09-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) James Boucher wrote: > I know this is a bit of flamebait, but as an ADA programmer from the > old school... I love ADA, but it is DEAD. DEAD. DEAD. My $3000 Can't be too old school, if you never learned how to capitalize it... -- T.E.D. Home - mailto:dennison@telepath.com Work - mailto:dennison@ssd.fsi.com WWW - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html ICQ - 10545591 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada and QNX 2000-09-29 0:00 Ada and QNX Michal Morawski 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher @ 2000-09-30 2:35 ` DuckE 2 siblings, 0 replies; 66+ messages in thread From: DuckE @ 2000-09-30 2:35 UTC (permalink / raw) I'm sure if you contact sales@gnat.com they'd be more than happy to help you out, but it may be expensive. I believe QNX supports a POSIX interface so it may not be difficult to produce a GNAT port. I hope this helps, SteveD "Michal Morawski" <morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl> wrote in message news:8r1i82$ri3$1@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl... > Hi > > Does anybody know is it possible to use ADA'95 compiler (e.g. GNAT) in QNX > enviroment. > This question includes debuggers (pdb), run time support etc? > > Thank you in advance > Michal Morawski (morawski@zsku.p.lodz.pl) > > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 66+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2000-11-03 5:34 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 66+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2000-09-29 0:00 Ada and QNX Michal Morawski 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-09-29 0:00 ` Jeff Creem 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-03 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-09-30 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-14 0:00 ` ahummmm 2000-10-15 0:00 ` James Boucher 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Steve Bellenot 2000-10-15 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 5:27 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ken Garlington 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 5:38 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr. 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2000-10-19 0:00 ` ADA vs. SmallEiffel Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX David Starner 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-17 0:28 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Frode Tennebø 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Steffen Huber 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-11-03 5:11 ` CMM in outside software (was Re: Ada and QNX) Robert I. Eachus 2000-11-03 5:34 ` Ken Garlington 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Ada and QNX Gautier 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-16 0:00 ` Lao Xiao Hai 2000-10-16 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-11-03 0:00 ` mark_lundquist 2000-10-17 0:39 ` Robert Dewar 2000-10-17 5:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Armin Steinhoff 2000-10-17 0:00 ` aek 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Marin David Condic 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Pat Rogers 2000-10-18 0:00 ` Igor Kovalenko 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Gautier 2000-10-17 0:00 ` mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Buyer's Remorse? (was Re: Ada and QNX) mjsilva 2000-10-17 0:00 ` Ada and QNX mjsilva 2000-09-30 0:00 ` gdemont 2000-09-30 0:00 ` Ted Dennison 2000-09-30 2:35 ` DuckE
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