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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c30d9137a672c74d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ted Dennison Subject: Re: Ada95 for Windows 95 Reviewers Wanted Date: 1996/03/26 Message-ID: <315821D7.7294@escmail.orl.mmc.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 144338703 references: <01BB15A1.A55A5820@janusada.msn.fullfeed.com> <4ivkd2$gkp@azure.dstc.edu.au> <3156F741.183A@nsrvan.van.wa.us> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Lockheed Martin Marine Systems mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.01 9000/750) Date: 1996-03-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jere W. Retzer wrote: > > Two of the advantages of Ada being its readability and portability, I would Any language's portability ENDS when you venture out of the defined language and into the OS. Ada is no different here. > be interested in what people think of the readability of windows Ada code. > My first reaction to the win32 bindings code I have seen is that it is > difficult to read, but I am admittedly new. Also, what happens to Your first reaction would be correct in this case. Any Ada code that makes heavy use of thin OS bindings is ugly, and generally tough to follow. GUI code is particularly heinous. (Note that I don't say "C" bindings. In Win32's case, they are technically Pascal bindings.) That's why I tend to write thick bindings whenever I'm going to use a significant amount of OS bindings. > portability in general when the program is targeted to an environment that > requires bindings? For that matter, will we have portability problems if we > use bindings from different vendors as implied above? Are these two > attributes affected by the 'thickness' of the binding as it is being > discussed here? 1 - It goes out the window. 2 - Yes. 3 - Somewhat. 3 deserves a more detailed answer. Yes, any "thick" bindings you have will probably be completely different when you switch vendors (assuming your vendors even give you thick bindings). However, the difference in vendor's thin bindings is likely to be something that will require minor changes to EVERY binding call. And with thin binding there are a LOT of calls. Also, note that if you write your own thick bindings, you will have the ability to make the nessecary changes in only the body of the bindings packages when you change vendors. This significantly reduces the impact. -- T.E.D. | Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com | | Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net | | URL - http://www.iag.net/~dennison |