Re: Garbage collection - was Re: Building a compiler (was: Fixed point multiplication ambiguity)

[Steven Hovater <nh-ho@mediaone.net>]

Vladimir -

Read your comments, and I suppose you have a non-business perspective. Not
being
critical, but it seems one has to weigh every added feature versus the cost in
engineer development
and testing time, and compare that to the business case - if you'll gain
business by adding an
obscure feature, then it might be worth it - but engineer time is precious, and
should be spent where
it'll get the most mileage.

(the above is my personal opinion,  I'm not speaking for Rational.)

Regards,
Steve

"news.oxy.com" wrote:

> robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <79ckt6$rp3$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>
> >>> robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> >>>      <79asc3$cq3$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >>>A very nice project would be to try to add full garbage
> >>>collection to GNAT ....
>
> >>In article <79c2ch$j1c$1@remarQ.com>,
> >>  "news.oxy.com" <Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com> wrote:
> >> No doubt, a lot of people using GNAT would be very happy
> >> as it would save them a lot of time for doing their own
> >> programming instead of inventing their own garbage
> >> collection methods.
> >
> >So, Vladimir, put all the effort you put into writing
> >posts to CLA into learning how to do this, and get busy.
> >That's the *real* way to help Ada :-)
>
> Congratulations Mr. Robert Devar !
> Wonderful answer !
>
> It is interesting to know whether your post represents ACT official position
> (as an Ada  software company) to the current and potential/future needs of
> Ada users or this is something else ?
>
> If this is an official position of ACT then it is very sad for Ada community
> and this is shame for ACT. Such position won't attract new people and
> organizations to Ada . Just the opposite it may only  divert them from it.
>
> Just imagine - Person representing Ada company in this forum tells that it
> would be nice to implement something that exists in LRM but is not still
> implemented (because it is not mandatory). Some other person reply that this
> would be great and receives the answer saying something like this: " go off,
> do it yourself and do not bother us any more ". Such position just kills
> Ada. It works as repellent.
> I have doubt that after reading such things  anyone new to Ada could
> consider it as a valuable choice for doing something serious. Not only
> quality of the language itself  has an impact on such decisions but more the
> attitude of the software companies that selling Ada compilers, tools and
> services.
>
> Expected and well understood answer would be: " We are glad to make Ada
> users more happy and we will do whatever we can to make this happen. We have
> such and such plans for future and we will do our best  to put then into
> existence as soon as possible. Please tell us more about your needs and you
> will see them implemented in our compiler/tools "
>
> A lot of bright people outside Ada club have rather negative opinion of Ada
> and do not wont to spend their time and efforts in doing anything in Ada.
> Small example: I recently asked professor  Douglas C. Schmidt  about his ACE
> (Adaptive Communication Environment
> http://siesta.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html  ):
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
> ||>           Are there (or were) any intentions to write it in Ada 95?
> ||
> ||   No.
> ||
> ||>           Are there any reasons why this can not be done?
> ||
> ||  No, other than no one seems very interested in Ada 95 anymore!
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------
> This is opinion of the professor who is Director of the Center
> for Distributed Object Computing in the Department of Computer Science in
> Washington University in Saint Louis.
> He is very bright person and he has a lot of sponsors from military and
> aerospace industry that could be sponsors of ACT as well (provided that ACT
> would do  .
> Surprisingly http://www.adaresource.org/  has a lot of references to Douglas
> C. Schmidt  works and to his ACE and TAO (real-time Corba implementation
> based on ACE).
>
> One of the answers to the question why no one seems to be very interested in
> Ada anymore lies in Mr. Devar phrase: "go off and do it yourself and do not
> bother us anymore".
> Here I would also remind Mr. Devar reply to my remark concerning GLADE
> distribution with GNAT 3.11 for Windows NT/95/98. It tells about the
> same:-"go off and do it yourself and do not bother us anymore".
>
> As far as garbage collection concerned   Mr. Devar probably did not read my
> other message posted yearlier than mentioned at the top that I've already
> did it for myself (as a small experiment).
>
> Regards,
> Vladimir Olensky
> (vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com)
> (Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
> Telecommunications specialist,
> Occidental C.I.S. Service, Inc. ( www.oxy.com )
> Moscow,
> Russia.
>
> P.S. Sorry for being late with the answer. I was out of the loop for some
> time busy with the other things.

--
Steven
Hovater
svh@rational.com
Software Engineering Consultant
Phone/fax:781-676-2565/2500
Rational
Software
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