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: fdb77,87f933acb1db70e3 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,f0cea1b3e44d2132,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Mike Stark Subject: Re: Java is not the right language Date: 1996/09/05 Message-ID: <322EA52F.69A0@gsfc.nasa.gov>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 178739017 references: <50llg6$min@demeter.omen.com.au> <50m48s$1o3@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- Greenbelt, Maryland USA mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Macintosh; I; 68K) Date: 1996-09-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bert THOMPSON wrote: > > ben@documenta.com.au (Benjamin Hardy) writes: > > |Alexander Anderson wrote: > |> > |> Still, I would prefer Ada to C++ any day. > > |How is this discussion of Ada relevant? > |Has somebody written an Ada bytecode compiler or something? As a matter of fact, somebody has. Intermetrics has a beta version of AppletMagic that can be downloaded from the WWW which does precisely that. I have been playing with it and have been impressed. In principle, you should be able to extend Ada tagged types with Java classes and vice versa. In practice, the documentation with the beta is much more helpful in developing Ada programs using the Java APIs than in integrating Ada code into Java applications or applets. At this point, we have successfully integrated an Ada package and made it callable by Java, but we haven't quite got the hang of how to extend Ada types into Java classes (but I think I'm close ;). The real news, however, is that the product seems to be very solid. The only problems I've had have been due to the beta not imple- menting a feature, or incomplete (beta-ish) documentation. The system itself works well and provides good diagnostic messages when you have a source code error. > > |It reminds me of this old humorous article about programming languages > |and the programmers that stereotypically would use them. > > |It said something like "Ada programmers are neurotic people who carefully > |line up sharp pencils on an otherwise clear desk", or something to that > |effect. Not too bad. I won't repeat what it said about COBOL... :-) > > Ha ha. Very droll. > > <> Bert -- where's your sense of humor,man!!?? I think the joke gets at the larger truth that when someone is developing systems that will land airliners you *want* that neurotic (I prefer the term "attention to detail", myself) attitude. It helps the number of takeoffs equal the number of landings, always a desirable characteristic! Mike (an Ada user who can take a joke) > > Bert