From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,2573df63ff37c586 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.130.100 with SMTP id od4mr4751486pbb.2.1335921699604; Tue, 01 May 2012 18:21:39 -0700 (PDT) Path: r9ni121638pbh.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Micronian Coder Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Adaforge? Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 18:07:49 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <23367249.1037.1335920869098.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbbfr22> References: <10872380.887.1335622497447.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbbfr18> <27505966.1982.1335867375380.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynei5> <9774792.924.1335912962276.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbez18> NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.46.200.231 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1335921699 32601 127.0.0.1 (2 May 2012 01:21:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 01:21:39 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <9774792.924.1335912962276.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbez18> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=199.46.200.231; posting-account=tXrPSAkAAAAFR3M1xqoK7TQdrNxOfPT0 User-Agent: G2/1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: 2012-05-01T18:07:49-07:00 List-Id: Hi Patrick, I like the points you have made and have felt the same about some them for = a quite a while. A few I would like to comment on are : [1] A private company seems to be the center of the Ada and profit has to b= e their goal=20 I really like AdaCore and if it wasn't for GNAT, I would never have gott= en in to Ada. One of the arguments of Ada has been that it is very portable= . I've raised some concern in the past with colleagues about long term proj= ects being implemented in Java or C# because each of those are basically co= ntrolled by one company and keep changing too frequently (remember all thos= e "deprecated" Java warnings). However, if it is perceived that AdaCore =3D= Ada, then it would be less effective as an argument. In reality, there are= still other compilers. However, it is a shame that most, namely Aonix (now= Atego), DDC-I, Green Hills, Janus/Ada, are still stuck at Ada95 (note: it = still is a very good language of course), so it can be perceive by others t= hat Ada will be a dead end. Fortunately, Irvine Compiler Corp can now be in= cluded in the list of compilers that fully supports Ada2005. I hope they ha= ve success with their Ada2005 offering. [2] highlighted a not-for-profit effort This is good too. The AdaIC website has a more modern look, but content wis= e it basically looks like a PR page for AdaCore since almost all the news i= s related to that company. An AdaForge page has to be more than that and it can be by focusing on what= the community is doing. News about project from companies can still be inc= luded, but it shouldn't be the main content like AdaIC. [3] Highlighted projects that were not mission critical/military Highlighted Ada's usefulness on multicore machines Definitely. Although Ada is great for the safety critical embedded area,= it has to appear it is beyond that to gather a larger base. When I keep re= ading how Ada is mostly used for military and safety critical systems, I ca= n't help but think that must put off a lot of people who may think Ada is n= ot appropriate elsewhere are "boring". On Tuesday, May 1, 2012 3:56:02 PM UTC-7, Patrick wrote: > Hi Riccardo >=20 > I strongly support your suggestion. I am not attacking Adacore or the eff= orts of others but there are several things that might be frightening off n= ewcomers to the language and your proposal might really help offset this. >=20 > As someone new myself, I have been worried as to why: >=20 > -Many Ada sites have a circa 1995 look to the them >=20 > -Many of these sites talk about Ada 95 furthering the outdated fears >=20 > -A private company seems to be the centre of the Ada and profit has to=20 > be their goal=20 >=20 > -Many of these sites have dead links >=20 >=20 > If we had an AdaForge site that was/had: >=20 > -A modern look and feel > -Highlighted projects that were not mission critical/military > -Highlighted Ada's usefulness on multicore machines > -highlighted a not-for-profit effort > -highlighted projects that were mixed with other languages > -highlight the open source compiler >=20 >=20 > and linked to current resources like books, tutorials etc, it would dispe= l some of the fears. One thing that helped me overcome by early concerns wa= s the fact that Ada is used in long term projects and projects just launche= d like the 787 plane. Even if all the Ada libraries die off the GNAT compil= er should be maintained for quite some time, perhaps 20+ years ? >=20 > If we posted information like this on the home page it might help stop th= e FUD. >=20 > I don't consider myself much of a graphic designer but I would be happy t= o hack together a static site that could generate discussions about the loo= k and feel of the site to come. Nothing would have to be accepted into the = new site. >=20 > LuaForge also has a lot of projects in various states of usefulness too. = They used Perl for their first LuaForge but it broke. Now they are using a = Sputnik backed site: > http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/ >=20 > It's written in Lua. We might have to use another language to drive the s= ite as Ada doesn't seem to have much of a following in the web space. Perha= ps later we could redo it with an Ada backend later. >=20 >=20 > Anyhow, thanks for bring this up! -Patrick