Re: Operating system

Re: Operating system

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

To: Jason Morefield et al.
From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.

At 11:14 PM 10/25/97 -0700, you wrote:
>can a person make an operating system with Ada?

Since your question was general and not limited to GNAT, I cross-posted my
answer to Comp.Lang.Ada.

Yes!  The Ada community should have or should now create an operating
system or significant part thereof in Ada.  The core of the operating
system should be in Ada for multi-tasking and/or real-time systems.  The
file system should be based on a database like Sage-ST (AdaSage).  Since
Ada interfaces with C, much of Linux or Minix could be reused, of course,
with the appropriate copyright permissions.  Other possibilities are to
extend Microsoft Windows CE or recode Wirth's Oberon system in Ada 95.

Many of the Ada compiler manufacturers seem to be totally oblivious to the
obvious facts that the number of users for Ada compilers is limited and the
number of users for the products produced by Ada compilers could be very
large.  Therefore, in order to obtain a decent return on capital, a vendor
should sell something that because it is used by the ultimate customer for
the Ada software can result in a large amount of money which is based on a
small royalty charge for each sale.

Microsoft makes much more money from its applications than its compilers.
One interesting part of the Ada story is PC users do NOT program using
compilers.  Spreadsheets are far superior tools for many commercial
applications.  Unfortunately, very little software engineering has been
applied to spreadsheets.  The use of decimal types and unique names for
rows and columns are obvious first steps.

In short, it is time for the Ada community to employ Ada to create new
applications which take advantage of the power of Ada 95. Coad was
absolutely correct when he said, "The language shows through.'