Re: Ada and QNX

[Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>]

Summarizing what you and others replied, it looks like everything is
cool with Ada. Just wondering why it is not yet really resurrected and
blooming and shining in all its glory.

Perhaps my personal doubts aren't that personal, huh? Nobody appears to
write an OS in Ada, being so good for system level work. And by the way,
many people say that GCC does not generate good code for C, so I'm kinda
curious how does GNAT manage to generate good code for such a more
complex language as Ada. Aside from code generation itself, how do they
manage to implement things like rendesvous in an efficient AND portable
way? Such things normally belong to system-dependent runtime libraries,
but in Ada they are part of language and having no proof I nevertheless
suspect that they are implemented by trading efficiency for portability.

It could be that I simply don't know enough and miss something. Would be
glad to be enlightened :)
- igor

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> 
> > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple
> > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. If someone manages to
> > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient
> > code) and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn
> > thing, then yes it might resurrect. Even then, I have doubts personally.
> 
> A) There *are* good quality compilers for Ada for lots of platforms.
> B) Nobody needs to know "the whole damn thing" in order to do useful work with
> it. (I doubt anybody knows *all* of C, Cobol, Java, Lisp, etc. since you
> seldom need *all* of a language to get a job done.)
> 
> >
> > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming
> > (even C++ is too high). And yet it is not as portable and distributable
> 
> I've heard this old saw so often I just want to cry. Would you accept as
> "system level programming" a jet engine control system functioning in a
> hard-realtime setting where there is *no* OS except for that which you write
> yourself? As in "I'm programming down at the bare metal, building my own
> interrupt handlers, low-level device I/O, etc."? Chances are, you've flown in
> a jet with such an engine control. Yes, it's really been done a number of
> times. There are a lot more examples, but these I can testify to in court
> since I developed them. Can we *please* never again hear that "Ada is no good
> for systems programming"?
> 
> >
> > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Plus, it smells too much
> > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Of course, those are
> > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I
> > don't say that those opinions are absolute right.
> >
> 
> You're never wrong about what you "like" or "prefer". You don't have to like
> Ada. I don't have to like C. However, I'll concede that C has its place in the
> world an often has either technical or business merits that make it the right
> choice for some applications. I would like people to look at Ada in a serious
> technical way with an eye toward trying to recognize its strengths & an honest
> effort to look for where it would be useful. All too often, people begin their
> inspection of Ada with an attitude of: "I *hate* Ada. Now let me learn enough
> about it to find or invent reasons why hating Ada is the right answer." This
> is a very human action. We all do it from time to time. But like many human
> actions, it is not terribly useful or constructive.
> 
> >
> > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good
> > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time
> > until a) and b) is done.
> >
> 
> A and B are done. See http://www.Adapower.com/ for sources for good quality
> compilers and a bibliography of good books for learning Ada. (Either *all* of
> it or just the parts you need to do your job.) I personally like Bard
> Crawford's book (see: www.LearnAda.com.) as a "quick" introduction to the
> language for those who need to get familiar with the basic features of the
> language without becoming a language lawyer. See also:
> http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada95books.html#1 for more books about Ada.
> 
> MDC
> --
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> Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/
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> 
>         --   P. J. O'Rourke
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