Re(dux): Ada for small machines (was Re: ada and robots)

[Ken Garlington <Kennie.E.Garlington@lmco.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Jim Granville posts a useful example in Modula. This will translate
> very clearly and straightforwardly into Ada (I am sure someone here
> will post the translation :-) so I am a little puzzled at Jim's claim
> that Ada is somehow unsuitable for this task -- I guess it must just
> come from knowing Modula better than Ada :-)\

I believe Jim's problems stems from the inability to build, using Ada,
"REAL CONTROL apps running in 89C1051's, with 1K of FLASH ROM." This
is, of course, due to the lack of Ada compilers in this area, possibly
caused in part by the need to build a tasking RTE for this target, and
most definitely caused in part by the perception by Ada vendors that
no one would use Ada for such a target. (This perception did not stop
Jim's company from building a Modula compiler for this target, however).

It's nice to say that Ada could be used here, given a compiler, but in
the real world the lack of an Ada compiler for such targets (and the
lack of interest by any Ada vendors to support such targets) makes
Ada an impractical choice. 

(I left comp.robotics.misc on this thread, since this is the real
impediment
for using Ada in some robotics applications - no compiler is available
for
several popular micro-controllers.)

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