Re: An Ada Advice Inquiry

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 7 May 2007 06:00:30 -0700, Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> On 7 Maj, 11:40, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
> 
>>> I believe you entirely that you had this problem - but today, at least
>>> three generations of compilers later, it's hardly a convincing
>>> argument.
>>
>> Huh, have you seen Borland Builder 2006?
> 
> No, but I've heard very bad stories about it and I wonder why the hell
> there is still any market for this.

Yes, because it was a customer requirement and because there are fancy
libraries one believed of being able to use with Borland. This again is
about how languages and compilers get chosen, in practise.

> Do we really talk about *new
> projects*, or continuation of legacy code with vendor lock-in?

It is always a continuation, new projects are made by old people living in
the old world.

> What about MSVC++8.0? g++4? Intel? Comeau?

We are using the first.

> The difference between Ada and C++ is that with C++ we have a set of
> compilers to choose from, so nobody is forcing you to use the worst
> one (unless you got locked-in, but then it's only your fault).

The choices between compilers are motivated by everything but the quality
of. It has the same pattern as with the language choice. No chance to
convince customer to scrap Borland, even less to switch to Ada.

> With Ada there is a set of versions of GNAT that are "somewhere"
> between Ada95 and Ada2005, where the exact meaning of "somewhere" is
> to be discovered by the user.

That is a transitional state.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de