Re: Now Unix sucks, too!

["Byron B. Kauffman" <KauffmanBB@lfwc.lockheed.com>]

Bob Crispen wrote:
> 
> Jay Martin <jmartin@CS.UCLA.EDU> sez:
> 

blah, blah, snip, snip

I've been doing the Ada thing for about 8 years or so, with 6 or 7 of
the 8 years spent working on DEC/VMS/Open VMS development systems for
VAX and 68040 targets, with the remainder (and currently) being in UNIX
environments - Harris HAPSE and SGI/VERDIX, to be exact. 

I realize making this statement may disqualify me from ever deserving
the official title of 'Mr. Embedded Software Engineer', but I guess I
just got spoiled by DEC, because I'm having a really hard time getting
used to the overall 'hackiness' of the UNIX way of life and the fact
that that same philosophy permeates the UNIX Ada products I've been
exposed to (admittedly, a short list). 

My current situation is that are currently porting an EXTREMLY large
piece of Ada (~4000 program units) to an SGI machine. Here's my
"rhetorical" question - why can't the UNIX Ada development systems (with
the obvious exception of the Rational Rose/APEX/etc. products) come up
with something as good as DEC's? Why should I, for example, have to
create make files that refer to other make files because there happen to
be too many source files in my system, or even better yet, have to
compile all 4000 source files into one library because the linker has
problems resolving generics between libraries? My source code is Ada,
but from the outside it REALLY looks like C, if you know what I mean.
(OMIGOSH!!! Maybe it's a C conspiracy against the evil Ada world!!!).
Not. I just think that some of these other houses should take a long
look at DEC's.