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From: clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline)
Subject: Re: Perhaps there _is_ a conspiracy against Ada
Date: 1997/04/24
Message-ID: <335ec9e1.15714756@news.airmail.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 236959216
References: <1997apr13.153233.1@eisner>
 <5iurff$2a8@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com> <335AEF0A.7F79@dynamite.com.au>
 <335ec70b.5444825@news.airmail.net> <335D804C.74E9@bix.com>
Organization: INTERNET AMERICA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-24T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Tom Moran <tmoran@bix.com> wrote:

>
>clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline) said:
>> 2. No support for functions as objects.  This made it impossible to write
>> event-driven programs without resorting to yet another vendor-specific hack.
>  Having done event driven programs in Ada on both PC and Mac I can
>testify that it was not only possible, but rather easy.  Ada also had
>the advantage that multitasking paradigms in addition to "event-driven"
>could be easily used without having to roll your own tasking supervisor.

And just how did you attach callback functions to GUI objects 
since the language did not support passing functions or procedures as
arguments?  Sure, each vendor defined a way to do that, but I had a
requirement to port this program to multiple architectures and compilers.

> 
>> 3. Extremely poor quality compilers.  I know; I tried a bunch of them: Verdix,
>> Telesoft (before the were bought by Alsys), and Alsys.
>  I can't speak to any of those, but the RR compiler I used was quite
>good.  Perhaps you were simply unlucky in your choice of compilers.

Not 100% sure, but I don't believe the RR compiler supported SGI
or Sun in 1991.

>> 4. Ridiculously pitiful debuggers.
>  Having the program print something like "Constraint Error, value = -1"
>and a traceback sure beats setting breakpoints in a program whose bug
>symptom is a system crash.

1. At least one of the Ada compilers I used was incapable of producing a
backtrace.

2. I find it faster to add events to debugger breakpoints when I find a
testing error than to add a bunch of gratuitious print statements
that I will later have to remove.