* Increased Interest In Ada? @ 2001-02-08 19:12 Marin David Condic 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-08 19:12 UTC (permalink / raw) This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. Does anybody else share this perception? Has anybody looked at the statistics to know if there has been a significant increase any time recently? If true, it would be a good sign. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 19:12 Increased Interest In Ada? Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer 2001-02-09 0:16 ` Ken Garlington 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol 2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Florian Weimer @ 2001-02-08 20:36 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> writes: > This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is > enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. Does anybody > else share this perception? Has anybody looked at the statistics to know > if there has been a significant increase any time recently? The UUNET numbers are remarkable: November 2000: 877 postings December 2000: 1007 postings January 2001: 1317 postings (My archive of de.admin.lists where these statistics are posted doesn't go back further.) > If true, it would be a good sign. The January number is probably influenced by Latin and other irrelevant topics. ;-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer @ 2001-02-09 0:16 ` Ken Garlington 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Ken Garlington @ 2001-02-09 0:16 UTC (permalink / raw) Wouldn't a more relevant statistic be the number of posters? "Florian Weimer" <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote in message news:87r918ap58.fsf@deneb.enyo.de... : Marin David Condic <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> writes: : : > This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is : > enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. Does anybody : > else share this perception? Has anybody looked at the statistics to know : > if there has been a significant increase any time recently? : : The UUNET numbers are remarkable: : : November 2000: 877 postings : December 2000: 1007 postings : January 2001: 1317 postings : : (My archive of de.admin.lists where these statistics are posted : doesn't go back further.) : : > If true, it would be a good sign. : : The January number is probably influenced by Latin and other : irrelevant topics. ;-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 19:12 Increased Interest In Ada? Marin David Condic 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer @ 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford 2001-02-08 23:17 ` JF Harrison 2001-02-09 13:08 ` Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol 2 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: BSCrawford @ 2001-02-08 20:40 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <3A82EFA2.C8756B09@acm.org>, Marin David Condic writes: >This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is >enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. ... I think we should begin speaking of "Ada, the Comeback Language." (It worked for Bill Clinton in 1992 :-) Bard S. Crawford, Author of "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary," a compact volume available in three forms: printed book, pdf file, and a collection of browser-based web pages. See http://www.learnada.com ----------------------- Stage Harbor Software 9 Patriots Drive - Lexington, MA - 02420 USA bard@learnada.com - 781-862-3613 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford @ 2001-02-08 23:17 ` JF Harrison 2001-02-09 13:33 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 13:08 ` Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: JF Harrison @ 2001-02-08 23:17 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada I don't read CLA through Usenet, I get it as a mailing list and send to it as a mailing list. This makes it much easier to read and participate in CLA. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 23:17 ` JF Harrison @ 2001-02-09 13:33 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 16:41 ` David Botton 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 13:33 UTC (permalink / raw) Years ago, that was how I got C.L.A. when the only access the company allowed was through mail. My recollection at the time was that the mail route missed tons of posts. Last I heard, nobody was maintaining a mail server for C.L.A. MDC JF Harrison wrote: > I don't read CLA through Usenet, I get it as a mailing list and send to it > as a mailing list. > This makes it much easier to read and participate in CLA. -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:33 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 16:41 ` David Botton 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: David Botton @ 2001-02-09 16:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada There is a maintained and working CLA to mail gateway that I have been using for some time now at: http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada David Botton ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> > Years ago, that was how I got C.L.A. when the only access the company allowed > was through mail. My recollection at the time was that the mail route missed > tons of posts. Last I heard, nobody was maintaining a mail server for C.L.A. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* RE: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford 2001-02-08 23:17 ` JF Harrison @ 2001-02-09 13:08 ` Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. 2001-02-09 13:38 ` Marin David Condic 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. @ 2001-02-09 13:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada From: Bob Leif To: Brad Crawford From a marketing perspective, we should treat Ada as a new product. Therefore, we should reverse Ada's name. If we changed the name and started issuing press releases, we could start a new software bandwagon. I know that there would be something unusual about hyping a product that actually worked. -----Original Message----- From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of BSCrawford Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 12:41 PM To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Subject: Re: Increased Interest In Ada? In article <3A82EFA2.C8756B09@acm.org>, Marin David Condic writes: >This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is >enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. ... I think we should begin speaking of "Ada, the Comeback Language." (It worked for Bill Clinton in 1992 :-) Bard S. Crawford, Author of "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary," a compact volume available in three forms: printed book, pdf file, and a collection of browser-based web pages. See http://www.learnada.com ----------------------- Stage Harbor Software 9 Patriots Drive - Lexington, MA - 02420 USA bard@learnada.com - 781-862-3613 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:08 ` Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. @ 2001-02-09 13:38 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:24 ` Ian Wild 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 13:38 UTC (permalink / raw) But then we'd have to start scolding people for writing ADA instead of adA, wouldn't we? :-) :-) MDC Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote: > From: Bob Leif > To: Brad Crawford > From a marketing perspective, we should treat Ada as a new product. > Therefore, we should reverse Ada's name. If we changed the name and started > issuing press releases, we could start a new software bandwagon. I know that > there would be something unusual about hyping a product that actually > worked. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:38 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 14:24 ` Ian Wild 2001-02-09 18:40 ` Florian Weimer 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Ian Wild @ 2001-02-09 14:24 UTC (permalink / raw) > Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote: > > > From a marketing perspective, we should treat Ada as a new product. > > ...If we changed the name ... Am I too late to do the "Ada'succ(s)" joke? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 14:24 ` Ian Wild @ 2001-02-09 18:40 ` Florian Weimer 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Florian Weimer @ 2001-02-09 18:40 UTC (permalink / raw) Ian Wild <ian@cfmu.eurocontrol.be> writes: > > > From a marketing perspective, we should treat Ada as a new product. > > > ...If we changed the name ... > > Am I too late to do the "Ada'succ(s)" joke? Isn't that a bit too ambivalent? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-08 19:12 Increased Interest In Ada? Marin David Condic 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford @ 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-20 20:27 ` Frank 2 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-09 9:35 UTC (permalink / raw) On Thu, 08 Feb 2001 14:12:34 -0500, Marin David Condic wrote: >This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is >enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. Does anybody >else share this perception? Has anybody looked at the statistics to know >if there has been a significant increase any time recently? > >If true, it would be a good sign. Yes it would. What would be very nice was if a lot of the students who take Ada 95 courses at the university could see that Ada 95 can also be used to make cool programs using either GtkAda or SDL or other Toolkits. I mean that one see that one can make nice GUIs with Ada too and not only the hyped Java. So that when the students that also codes as a hobby, goes home they will continue programming in Ada 95 and not revert to C/C++ or Java. I think Linux and the desktop area of Linux is a opportunity for Ada to make a "comeback". -- Preben Randhol ---------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- iMy favorite editor is Emacs!<ESC>bcwVim<ESC> -- vim best-editor.txt ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:36 ` Preben Randhol ` (2 more replies) 2001-02-20 20:27 ` Frank 1 sibling, 3 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 13:36 UTC (permalink / raw) If the profs who teach Ada would refer their students here and to some of the more useful web sites like Adapower, this would help because they would get exposed to these sorts of uses of Ada. We can always do our part by politely helping out the students when we can. MDC Preben Randhol wrote: > What would be very nice was if a lot of the students who take Ada 95 > courses at the university could see that Ada 95 can also be used to > make cool programs using either GtkAda or SDL or other Toolkits. I > mean that one see that one can make nice GUIs with Ada too and not > only the hyped Java. So that when the students that also codes as a > hobby, goes home they will continue programming in Ada 95 and not > revert to C/C++ or Java. I think Linux and the desktop area of Linux > is a opportunity for Ada to make a "comeback". > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ====================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-09 14:36 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 21:21 ` Ehud Lamm 2001-02-09 21:25 ` Jeffrey D. Cherry 2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-09 14:36 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, 09 Feb 2001 08:36:29 -0500, Marin David Condic wrote: >If the profs who teach Ada would refer their students here and to some of the >more useful web sites like Adapower, this would help because they would get >exposed to these sorts of uses of Ada. We can always do our part by politely >helping out the students when we can. Yes I agree. Also as long as it isn't a "Do my homework for me"-post :-) -- Preben Randhol ------------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.� ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:36 ` Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-09 21:21 ` Ehud Lamm 2001-02-09 21:25 ` Jeffrey D. Cherry 2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Ehud Lamm @ 2001-02-09 21:21 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> wrote in message news:3A83F25C.CEB50F1D@acm.org... > If the profs who teach Ada would refer their students here and to some of the > more useful web sites like Adapower, this would help because they would get > exposed to these sorts of uses of Ada. We can always do our part by politely > helping out the students when we can. > I do this all the time. I send them to find reusable stuff on AdaPower (some of it my contributios, which I for this very purpose post on AdaPower and not on our local site). I also tell them about interesting comp.lang.ada threads. Those that have genuine interests in learning, try to use these resources. Alas, they are always the minority. Some recent threads here started by my students. One was the "Visual Ada" thread. What's interesting is that the semester just ended, so the student is asking about an Ada IDE after the course ended. Does this mean he likes to use Ada for other things? I don't know. Ehud Lamm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:36 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 21:21 ` Ehud Lamm @ 2001-02-09 21:25 ` Jeffrey D. Cherry 2001-02-12 17:43 ` Stephen Leake 2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Jeffrey D. Cherry @ 2001-02-09 21:25 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > If the profs who teach Ada would refer their students here and to some of the > more useful web sites like Adapower, this would help because they would get > exposed to these sorts of uses of Ada. We can always do our part by politely > helping out the students when we can. As a part-time instructor, I teach Ada (and other languages) at the local community college for both CS1 and CS2 courses. My syllabus for each of the Ada courses strongly recommends that students check out Ada resources on the Internet, starting with AdaPower and CLA. The one thing I restrict students from doing is asking for help on their homework in CLA. That's my job. The other computer science instructor has a similar policy and even assigns homework requiring students to summarize a recent Internet article, discussion thread, etc. Although students loathe to do any more reading than the minimum, occasionally, there is the motivated student that asks a question about some discussion on CLA. I've also found certain CLA discussions to be quite interesting and posed the original query to my class in order to generate a discussion of "real-world" problems. I have demonstrated GtkAda applications to show students that GUI applications can be built with Ada. I have also shown how a Java application can be built using Ada rather than Java (using JGNAT of course). Although my Ada students were happy to hear that they don't have to learn Java to create Java apps, my Java students were rather disappointed. I suspect that other instructors, throughout the world, have similar practices that encourage students to explore the resources of the Internet and participate in discussion groups. If you fail to notice a large contingent of student participation on CLA, it's not necessarily due to the lack of encouragement by their instructors. Personally, I believe that it is more important to teach students good software engineering principles and practices than to sing the praises of any one particular programming language. I try to instill in my students that a programming language is merely a tool used to express their design in a form that a stupid machine can understand. At the end of each of my CS1 courses, I always devote a lecture hour to persuading students to learn another programming language, and then another, and another, .... I do this because a good engineer will learn about all the available tools and then apply proper engineering criteria to select the right tool for the job at hand. Ada, by design, is one of the best tools for expressing a software design in the vast majority of real-world applications. Perhaps the increased interest in Ada is due to all the diligent teachers who have taught their students well. Perhaps those students have now graduated and are choosing Ada after performing a tradeoff analysis with other programming languages. Perhaps these well educated graduates are dismissing the marketing group's recommendation for a programming language because it's based on personal bias, advertising hype, perceived popularity, or the misperception that a certain programming language will somehow guarantee an increased market share. Perhaps these graduates are negating management pressure to use one language by showing that it is more cost effective to select a programming language based on technical merits of the language in light of the specific problem and accounting for all phases of the resulting product's useful life. I may be taking this a little too personally since I'm an instructor. I may be a little too sensitive to comments about instructors not doing enough with regard to teaching a programming language. If so, then I apologize for my little tirade and I appreciate your tolerance of my rankings. In any case, thanks for allowing me to vent; I feel better. -- Regards, Jeffrey D. Cherry Senior IV&V Analyst Logicon Operations and Services Logicon Inc. a Northrop Grumman company ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 21:25 ` Jeffrey D. Cherry @ 2001-02-12 17:43 ` Stephen Leake 2001-02-13 15:14 ` Jerry Petrey 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 2001-02-12 17:43 UTC (permalink / raw) "Jeffrey D. Cherry" <jdcherry@utech.net> writes: > As a part-time instructor, I teach Ada (and other languages) at the local > community college for both CS1 and CS2 courses. My syllabus for each of > the Ada courses strongly recommends that students check out Ada resources > on the Internet, starting with AdaPower and CLA. The one thing I restrict > students from doing is asking for help on their homework in CLA. That's > my job. The other computer science instructor has a similar policy and > even assigns homework requiring students to summarize a recent Internet > article, discussion thread, etc. > > <snip lots of good stuff> As an Ada enthusiast, but more importantly as a software engineer who would like to work with well trained software engineers, I thank you for your efforts. Keep up the good work; the world will be a better place for it! > -- > Regards, > Jeffrey D. Cherry > Senior IV&V Analyst > Logicon Operations and Services > Logicon Inc. > a Northrop Grumman company -- -- Stephen Leake, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-12 17:43 ` Stephen Leake @ 2001-02-13 15:14 ` Jerry Petrey 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 2001-02-13 15:14 UTC (permalink / raw) Stephen Leake wrote: > > "Jeffrey D. Cherry" <jdcherry@utech.net> writes: > > > As a part-time instructor, I teach Ada (and other languages) at the local > > community college for both CS1 and CS2 courses. My syllabus for each of > > the Ada courses strongly recommends that students check out Ada resources > > on the Internet, starting with AdaPower and CLA. The one thing I restrict > > students from doing is asking for help on their homework in CLA. That's > > my job. The other computer science instructor has a similar policy and > > even assigns homework requiring students to summarize a recent Internet > > article, discussion thread, etc. > > > > <snip lots of good stuff> > > As an Ada enthusiast, but more importantly as a software engineer who > would like to work with well trained software engineers, I thank you > for your efforts. > > Keep up the good work; the world will be a better place for it! > > > -- > > Regards, > > Jeffrey D. Cherry > > Senior IV&V Analyst > > Logicon Operations and Services > > Logicon Inc. > > a Northrop Grumman company > > -- > -- Stephen Leake, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I second that. Jeffrey, your work is definitely appreciated. I hope some of your former students end up here. We are always looking for good software engineers and I especially like those with an Ada background. More and more of our programs are being pushed towards C++ because so many managers think Ada is dead and are too ignorant to see the benefits. I think it is people like you who can make a difference. Best wishes, Jerry -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jerry Petrey -- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation, Guidance, & Control -- Raytheon Missile Systems - Member Team Ada & Team Forth -- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-20 20:27 ` Frank 2001-02-21 14:51 ` Preben Randhol 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Frank @ 2001-02-20 20:27 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi! Are there Ada courses on NTNU? Frank Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message news:slrn987ego.mc.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no... > On Thu, 08 Feb 2001 14:12:34 -0500, Marin David Condic wrote: > >This is just a perceptual observation, but it seems that C.L.A. is > >enjoying an increased participation level in recent months. Does anybody > >else share this perception? Has anybody looked at the statistics to know > >if there has been a significant increase any time recently? > > > >If true, it would be a good sign. > > Yes it would. > > What would be very nice was if a lot of the students who take Ada 95 > courses at the university could see that Ada 95 can also be used to > make cool programs using either GtkAda or SDL or other Toolkits. I > mean that one see that one can make nice GUIs with Ada too and not > only the hyped Java. So that when the students that also codes as a > hobby, goes home they will continue programming in Ada 95 and not > revert to C/C++ or Java. I think Linux and the desktop area of Linux > is a opportunity for Ada to make a "comeback". > > -- > Preben Randhol ---------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- > iMy favorite editor is Emacs!<ESC>bcwVim<ESC> > -- vim best-editor.txt > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-20 20:27 ` Frank @ 2001-02-21 14:51 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-21 14:51 UTC (permalink / raw) On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:27:16 +0100, Frank wrote: >Hi! > >Are there Ada courses on NTNU? Not that I know of. The Computer Science dep uses Java and C++ I think, but perhaps the Electronics department use some Ada. Sadly the introductory computer courses are now in Fortran and Java. :-( -- Preben Randhol ------------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.� ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 14:51 ` Preben Randhol @ 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-21 15:18 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1575 bytes --] I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. I am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An embedded programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and start teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world systems. (Does anyone smell commercial possibilities here? :-) MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message news:slrn997li7.193.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no... > On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:27:16 +0100, Frank wrote: > >Hi! > > > >Are there Ada courses on NTNU? > > Not that I know of. The Computer Science dep uses Java and C++ I think, > but perhaps the Electronics department use some Ada. Sadly the > introductory computer courses are now in Fortran and Java. :-( > > -- > Preben Randhol ------------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- > �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.� ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 22:56 ` Jerry Petrey ` (2 more replies) 2001-02-22 11:56 ` Tarjei T. Jensen ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 3 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-21 20:54 UTC (permalink / raw) It occurrs to me that much of the embedded programming experience could be simulated in software. Obviously, you wouldn't get the "Real World" experience of dealing with actual physical entities, but, for example, actuators could be displayed on a screen and made to move much as they would in the physical world. The software interface to such simulated sensors and actuators wouldn't be quite the same thing as having to deal with actual ports, memory addresses, etc., but it might be made close enough to be a useful experience. Providing such a simulation in Ada would certainly be a lot easier to achieve than finding an appropriate embedded target & compiler port. Question: Given that a simulation like this would lack certain important aspects of the embedded, realtime programming experience (having to somehow work with a cross-compilation environment, dealing with linkage issues, memory mapping, physical reality, etc.) might it still be useful as a teaching tool? I think a simulation in conjunction with hardware would be useful, but I'm wondering about finding a way around the problem of compiler and hardware availability? MDC "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote in message news:970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk... > I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if > there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for > playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the > shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a > class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. I > am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot > discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An embedded > programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and start > teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an > educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world > systems. > -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-21 22:56 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-02-22 10:43 ` Peter Amey 2001-02-23 4:58 ` Cesar Rabak 2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 2001-02-21 22:56 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > It occurrs to me that much of the embedded programming experience could be > simulated in software. Obviously, you wouldn't get the "Real World" > experience of dealing with actual physical entities, but, for example, > actuators could be displayed on a screen and made to move much as they would > in the physical world. The software interface to such simulated sensors and > actuators wouldn't be quite the same thing as having to deal with actual > ports, memory addresses, etc., but it might be made close enough to be a > useful experience. Providing such a simulation in Ada would certainly be a > lot easier to achieve than finding an appropriate embedded target & compiler > port. > > Question: Given that a simulation like this would lack certain important > aspects of the embedded, realtime programming experience (having to somehow > work with a cross-compilation environment, dealing with linkage issues, > memory mapping, physical reality, etc.) might it still be useful as a > teaching tool? I think a simulation in conjunction with hardware would be > useful, but I'm wondering about finding a way around the problem of compiler > and hardware availability? > > MDC > > "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote in > message news:970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk... > > I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if > > there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for > > playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the > > shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a > > class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. > I > > am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot > > discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An > embedded > > programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and > start > > teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an > > educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world > > systems. > > > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ Marin, from my experience, I have found that such an approach can be very useful. Years ago, I used to teach a course in embedded programming using Forth. My class project was modeled after one from Forth, Inc. (who I had worked for in the past). They used a small traffic light with road sensors and such so that you could move a toy car over them and activate the sensors. The students would then write the Forth code to implement the assigned behavior. In my class, I needed to travel to the location and I didn't want to take this kind of hardware with me so I build a PC simulator for the traffic light and sensors and then each student would run this on his PC and write the code to control it much like he would with the real hardware. When he would touch the road on the PC screen with the mouse it would register as a car passing and his code would then set the light sequence according to the required behavior (and display them on the screen). It seemed to be quite effective. Each student had his own little self contained environment in his PC to play around in and experiment with different algorithms without the need to connect to any special hardware. Of course, at some point they need to get the real hardware experience but this is a good way to start. Jerry -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jerry Petrey -- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation, Guidance, & Control -- Raytheon Missile Systems - Member Team Ada & Team Forth -- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 22:56 ` Jerry Petrey @ 2001-02-22 10:43 ` Peter Amey 2001-02-22 14:27 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 4:58 ` Cesar Rabak 2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Peter Amey @ 2001-02-22 10:43 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > It occurrs to me that much of the embedded programming experience could be > simulated in software. Obviously, you wouldn't get the "Real World" > experience of dealing with actual physical entities, but, for example, > actuators could be displayed on a screen and made to move much as they would > in the physical world. The software interface to such simulated sensors and > actuators wouldn't be quite the same thing as having to deal with actual > ports, memory addresses, etc., but it might be made close enough to be a > useful experience. Providing such a simulation in Ada would certainly be a > lot easier to achieve than finding an appropriate embedded target & compiler > port. > > Question: Given that a simulation like this would lack certain important > aspects of the embedded, realtime programming experience (having to somehow > work with a cross-compilation environment, dealing with linkage issues, > memory mapping, physical reality, etc.) might it still be useful as a > teaching tool? I think a simulation in conjunction with hardware would be > useful, but I'm wondering about finding a way around the problem of compiler > and hardware availability? > We have done something like this for the SPARK course. We have a visual basic :-( on-screen emulation of a hardware device and students can drive it from their SPARK code using interface packages we provide. The link between SPARK and VB is done with David Botton's excellent COM stuff. Peter ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-22 10:43 ` Peter Amey @ 2001-02-22 14:27 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-27 11:28 ` Peter Amey 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-22 14:27 UTC (permalink / raw) That sounds interesting. I'm wondering what sort of students you present this to and what are the learning objectives? Do you think they learn much about the embedded aspects, or do they learn more about realtime programming? My concern is that such a simulation would be useful for developing the high level algorithms for embedded, realtime controls, but probably won't do a good job of teaching the low level aspects of embedded programming. At the high level, embedded programming looks much like any other kind of programming - albeit, within a specialized problem domain. What I'd like to find is a good, inexpensive way of teaching the low level aspects - things like accessing different kinds of memory, interfacing to I/O devices, utilizing hardware interrupts, etc. as well as the higher level concepts of device control. You just don't get much of a feel for real embedded programming unless you've had to spend time fighting with a linker to get things located at specific places, or struggling to get bootstrap code to load your software across a comm link, or get into the "Broken Software/Broken Hardware" debate. I think it would be helpful to Ada to have a good embedded/realtime off-the-shelf course (book, software, hardware...) available, but I've just not encountered the components that would make this possible at a practical cost. Software simulation might make an interesting project, but I'm not sure that it would illustrate enough of the important parts of the embedded world. Now possibly, if one were to bundle a compiler with a simulation of an actual SBC with a popular processor, then you might have something there. However, that starts becoming more work than simply designing a board and retargeting a compiler... :-) MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Peter Amey" <pna@praxis-cs.co.uk> wrote in message news:3A94ED5E.4FF1E8EB@praxis-cs.co.uk... > We have done something like this for the SPARK course. We have a visual > basic :-( on-screen emulation of a hardware device and students can > drive it from their SPARK code using interface packages we provide. The > link between SPARK and VB is done with David Botton's excellent COM > stuff. > > > Peter ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-22 14:27 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-27 11:28 ` Peter Amey 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Peter Amey @ 2001-02-27 11:28 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > That sounds interesting. I'm wondering what sort of students you present > this to and what are the learning objectives? Do you think they learn much > about the embedded aspects, or do they learn more about realtime > programming? > Our aim is to teach the design and static analysis aspects of SPARK. The low-level, real-time aspects of the project are not particularly important. The aim of the emulator is more to give students satisfaction: they write all this stuff, the SPARK Examiner tells them it is good but they didn't used to get to see it working. The emulator just gives that extra satisfaction. (Incidently, the first time the "model answer" had ever been compiled or run was when we tested the emulator - up to then it had only been analysed - it worked perfectly first time). > My concern is that such a simulation would be useful for developing the high > level algorithms for embedded, realtime controls, but probably won't do a > good job of teaching the low level aspects of embedded programming. At the > high level, embedded programming looks much like any other kind of > programming - albeit, within a specialized problem domain. What I'd like to > find is a good, inexpensive way of teaching the low level aspects - things > like accessing different kinds of memory, interfacing to I/O devices, > utilizing hardware interrupts, etc. as well as the higher level concepts of > device control. You just don't get much of a feel for real embedded > programming unless you've had to spend time fighting with a linker to get > things located at specific places, or struggling to get bootstrap code to > load your software across a comm link, or get into the "Broken > Software/Broken Hardware" debate. I think you are probably right, but for our particular purpose this was not an issue. [snip] Peter -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- __ Peter Amey, Product Manager ) Praxis Critical Systems Ltd / 20, Manvers Street, Bath, BA1 1PX / 0 Tel: +44 (0)1225 466991 (_/ Fax: +44 (0)1225 469006 http://www.praxis-cs.co.uk/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 22:56 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-02-22 10:43 ` Peter Amey @ 2001-02-23 4:58 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-23 15:15 ` Marin David Condic 2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-23 4:58 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > It occurrs to me that much of the embedded programming experience could be > simulated in software. Obviously, you wouldn't get the "Real World" > experience of dealing with actual physical entities, but, for example, > actuators could be displayed on a screen and made to move much as they would > in the physical world. The software interface to such simulated sensors and > actuators wouldn't be quite the same thing as having to deal with actual > ports, memory addresses, etc., but it might be made close enough to be a > useful experience. Providing such a simulation in Ada would certainly be a > lot easier to achieve than finding an appropriate embedded target & compiler > port. I disagree, but see below. > > Question: Given that a simulation like this would lack certain important > aspects of the embedded, realtime programming experience (having to somehow > work with a cross-compilation environment, dealing with linkage issues, > memory mapping, physical reality, etc.) might it still be useful as a > teaching tool? I think a simulation in conjunction with hardware would be > useful, but I'm wondering about finding a way around the problem of compiler > and hardware availability? As you yourself pointed out, one such a system would rapidly fall from a useful system to teach embedded systems programming to a simulator of some sort, and then Ada being a relatively low level language for that would loose its appeal to others like Matlab (which has a nice package for simulating a lot of industrial processes) or some scripting language already 'readied' with the right high level commands (macros?). > > MDC > > "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote in > message news:970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk... > > I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if > > there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for > > playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the > > shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a > > class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. I don't know how is the situation in other parts of the world for this kind of products, but in this country (Brazil), usually the kits for this type of training are based in 8 bit microcontrollers. This IMHO will lead to the need of some kind of subset of Ada language, which ultimately may be counterproductive to original objective (spreading Ada IIRC). > I > > am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot > > discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An > embedded > > programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and > start > > teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an > > educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world > > systems. > > Just my 0.019999... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 4:58 ` Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-23 15:15 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-24 21:40 ` Cesar Rabak 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 15:15 UTC (permalink / raw) "Cesar Rabak" <csrabak@uol.com.br> wrote in message news:3A95EDF6.8A132FE3@uol.com.br... > Marin David Condic wrote: > > useful experience. Providing such a simulation in Ada would certainly be a > > lot easier to achieve than finding an appropriate embedded target & compiler > > port. > > I disagree, but see below. > You disagree? Does this mean you know of a good Ada compiler targeted to an inexpensive SBC that would fit the description? Or are you saying that porting an Ada compiler to some SBC would be no big deal? In either case, I'd definitely like to challenge you to verify this through demonstration. :-) > I don't know how is the situation in other parts of the world for this > kind of products, but in this country (Brazil), usually the kits for > this type of training are based in 8 bit microcontrollers. This IMHO > will lead to the need of some kind of subset of Ada language, which > ultimately may be counterproductive to original objective (spreading Ada > IIRC). > Well the world has become a lot bigger than 8 bit microcontrollers. I am currently working with a box that has a MIPS processor and almost the whole system on a single chip. So a 32-bit processor able to control some physical/electrical devices from a single board at an inexpensive price is not at all out of the question. The problem is: Which One? If you are familiar with embedded systems, I'm sure you know that there just aren't thousands of Ada ports out there for popular boards/development kits. You need the compiler, plus a good, powerful linker & cross-target debugger along with probably some available libraries, bootstrap code, descent documentation of everything, etc. Saying "Well GNAT has a port to chip X available somewhere on the net..." is interesting, but if you don't have all the pieces pulled together into a nicely integrated package that works reliably, it wouldn't make a good student environment. (It's hard enough for the pros to figure out how to get this sort of thing to work - how much harder would it be for the neophytes? :-) I'm always interested in hearing ideas on this topic if you have any. Thanks. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 15:15 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-24 21:40 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-25 15:10 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-24 21:40 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > I disagree, but see below. > > > You disagree? Does this mean you know of a good Ada compiler targeted to an > inexpensive SBC that would fit the description? Or are you saying that > porting an Ada compiler to some SBC would be no big deal? In either case, > I'd definitely like to challenge you to verify this through demonstration. > :-) OK. I'll elaborate! I don't know of any good Ada compiler targeted to inexpensive SBC or LCDS. As already posted elsewhere in this thread, I second the position that perhaps porting is not the principal problem, but rather to assemble all the pieces, including a targeted tutorial (with exercises), etc. So perhaps we agree in the factual observation, and my disagreeing is more in the sizing of the opportunity. > > > Well the world has become a lot bigger than 8 bit microcontrollers. Agreed. But you see 32 bits processors abundant in kits designed for instructional use? >I am > currently working with a box that has a MIPS processor and almost the whole > system on a single chip. So a 32-bit processor able to control some > physical/electrical devices from a single board at an inexpensive price is > not at all out of the question. The problem is: Which One? This is an interesting question! It had to be inexpensive with abundant (and perhaps free) documentation available, and if possible a chip which people would feel it is worthwhile to expend time on it. >If you are > familiar with embedded systems, I'm sure you know that there just aren't > thousands of Ada ports out there for popular boards/development kits. You > need the compiler, plus a good, powerful linker & cross-target debugger > along with probably some available libraries, bootstrap code, descent > documentation of everything, etc. Saying "Well GNAT has a port to chip X > available somewhere on the net..." is interesting, but if you don't have all > the pieces pulled together into a nicely integrated package that works > reliably, it wouldn't make a good student environment. (It's hard enough for > the pros to figure out how to get this sort of thing to work - how much > harder would it be for the neophytes? :-) Second in full. > > I'm always interested in hearing ideas on this topic if you have any. > Thanks. I think a way to reduce the 'initial' cost of a such project would be to detect the 20% of board/kits which have the 80% of the "market" and have the ports (with all the provisos above mentioned) funded. On a second but necessarily concurrent front, we need to create a mind share in users/instructors/industry about the use of Ada for embedded systems. Otherwise, I feel the whole exercise will doomed. Cesar ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-24 21:40 ` Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-25 15:10 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-26 0:34 ` Cesar Rabak 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-25 15:10 UTC (permalink / raw) I've seen plenty of development kits wherein some company will sell you a developmental version of their SBC, the cross compiler, (related tools), cable to your PC & documentation for in the neighborhood of $500. (Of course, this is with C as the programming language.) That ought to be within the budget of the serious student if it was used for more than one class. It would at least be within the budget of the school's computer lab to have 3 or 4 available for student's to do their lab work on. A company selling the kit might give away several sets of their documentation or make them available at an inexpensive price, so I don't see much standing in the way of students getting the material they need. The real problem is having a similar environment with an Ada compiler. No technical reason why it couldn't exist at a similar price - just apparently not an economic powerhouse or someone would have likely done it by now. (My favorite Alan Greenspan joke: Greenspan is walking down the street with his wife. His wife sees a $20 bill on the ground and points it out to Alan. He replies: "You must be mistaken dear. If there were a $20 bill on the ground, someone would have picked it up by now!") MDC Cesar Rabak wrote: > >I am > > currently working with a box that has a MIPS processor and almost the whole > > system on a single chip. So a 32-bit processor able to control some > > physical/electrical devices from a single board at an inexpensive price is > > not at all out of the question. The problem is: Which One? > > This is an interesting question! It had to be inexpensive with abundant > (and perhaps free) documentation available, and if possible a chip which > people would feel it is worthwhile to expend time on it. -- ============================================================= Marin David Condic - Pace Micro - http://www.pacemicro.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ============================================================= ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-25 15:10 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-26 0:34 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-26 14:51 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-26 0:34 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > I've seen plenty of development kits wherein some company will sell you a > developmental version of their SBC, the cross compiler, (related tools), cable to > your PC & documentation for in the neighborhood of $500. (Of course, this is with > C as the programming language.) That ought to be within the budget of the serious > student if it was used for more than one class. Besides being within the budget it must in the so called "mind share". $500 may do a descent upgrade in the PC box (out monitor)! Some time ago I taught in a technical school and they used some Rigel boards (www.rigelcorp.com). They had some very affordable boards which would be within budget even of hobbyists (IIRC < US$100). In this price range, I'm affraid we'll get stuck to the present situation! Only people who 'fall in love with Ada' will purchase for their own... > It would at least be within the > budget of the school's computer lab to have 3 or 4 available for student's to do > their lab work on. A company selling the kit might give away several sets of their > documentation or make them available at an inexpensive price, so I don't see much > standing in the way of students getting the material they need. Yes, for schools' labs this is a feasible range. Also I think you're quite right one (or more, let's try to be optimistic ;-) textbooks will also make a difference. > > The real problem is having a similar environment with an Ada compiler. No > technical reason why it couldn't exist at a similar price - just apparently not an > economic powerhouse or someone would have likely done it by now. > Yes I feel this is turning to be the 'chicken and egg' problem. As the perceived use of Ada is diminishing, the perceived opportunity for the teaching material has the same trend. Also be in the corporate or embedded systems realms, less and less Ada is being tought as a "mainstream" language. So right now nor the powerhouse, it seems to be seen as a flashlight battery! > (My favorite Alan Greenspan joke: Greenspan is walking down the street with his > wife. His wife sees a $20 bill on the ground and points it out to Alan. He > replies: "You must be mistaken dear. If there were a $20 bill on the ground, > someone would have picked it up by now!") Neat! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-26 0:34 ` Cesar Rabak @ 2001-02-26 14:51 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-26 21:23 ` non-Ada, was " tmoran 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-26 14:51 UTC (permalink / raw) "Cesar Rabak" <csrabak@uol.com.br> wrote in message news:3A99A4B3.694445DD@uol.com.br... > Marin David Condic wrote: > > > > I've seen plenty of development kits wherein some company will sell you a > > developmental version of their SBC, the cross compiler, (related tools), cable to > > your PC & documentation for in the neighborhood of $500. (Of course, this is with > > C as the programming language.) That ought to be within the budget of the serious > > student if it was used for more than one class. > > Besides being within the budget it must in the so called "mind share". > $500 may do a descent upgrade in the PC box (out monitor)! > Well, if you think about it, this may not be an issue at all. Consider the possibility that the school's computer lab has a handful of the development boards & the base compiler is a GNAT variant. A student with a PC could hack the code at home on his PC & make sure it compiles - perhaps even testing parts of it without the SBC, then take it to the lab for full-up testing. No big expenditure there except for the need to have a PC. > Some time ago I taught in a technical school and they used some Rigel > boards (www.rigelcorp.com). They had some very affordable boards which > would be within budget even of hobbyists (IIRC < US$100). > > In this price range, I'm affraid we'll get stuck to the present > situation! Only people who 'fall in love with Ada' will purchase for > their own... > To some extent, the "falling in love with Ada" may not be important. *IF* there was a really spiffy kit out there that pretty much provided an embedded programming class in a bag, profs would be *REALLY TEMPTED* to use whatever was available, even if they weren't thrilled with the language or SBC architecture. Mostly, this is because it eliminates so much work for them. > > > It would at least be within the > > budget of the school's computer lab to have 3 or 4 available for student's to do > > their lab work on. A company selling the kit might give away several sets of their > > documentation or make them available at an inexpensive price, so I don't see much > > standing in the way of students getting the material they need. > > Yes, for schools' labs this is a feasible range. > Also I think you're quite right one (or more, let's try to be optimistic > ;-) textbooks will also make a difference. > Yup. You'd need a good textbook with plenty of examples & homework problems based on the SBC you chose. I don't think that is impossible, but it certainly is non-trivial. > > > > The real problem is having a similar environment with an Ada compiler. No > > technical reason why it couldn't exist at a similar price - just apparently not an > > economic powerhouse or someone would have likely done it by now. > > > > Yes I feel this is turning to be the 'chicken and egg' problem. As the > perceived use of Ada is diminishing, the perceived opportunity for the > teaching material has the same trend. Also be in the corporate or > embedded systems realms, less and less Ada is being tought as a > "mainstream" language. So right now nor the powerhouse, it seems to be > seen as a flashlight battery! > Well, as I observed above - even if Ada is not perceived as popular, simply having the kit available would start creating the demand. Profs have way too many other things to do with their time and don't necessarily want to design an intro-level embedded programming course. Or maybe they'd like to have one, but there is a perceived lack of materials. Being the guys who had an off-the-shelf, shrink-wrapped course would be a good position to be in. They'd want it no matter what the details are just because it lets them provide an educational experience at minimal cost & time. > > > (My favorite Alan Greenspan joke: Greenspan is walking down the street with his > > wife. His wife sees a $20 bill on the ground and points it out to Alan. He > > replies: "You must be mistaken dear. If there were a $20 bill on the ground, > > someone would have picked it up by now!") > > Neat! I hear that Bill Gates' hourly earnings are so high that if he dropped a $20 bill on the ground it would cost him more to bend over and pick it up than it is worth. :-) MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* non-Ada, was Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-26 14:51 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-26 21:23 ` tmoran 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: tmoran @ 2001-02-26 21:23 UTC (permalink / raw) >I hear that Bill Gates' hourly earnings are so high that if he dropped a $20 >bill on the ground it would cost him more to bend over and pick it up than >it is worth. :-) At two seconds/pick up, any of those folks making over $72M/year should ignore $20 bills on the ground. Most software engineers should ignore single pennys, but be on the lookout for nickels. ;) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-22 11:56 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-26 23:49 ` Model railroad package (was: Re: Increased Interest In Ada?) Dirk Craeynest 2001-03-10 3:37 ` Increased Interest In Ada? DuckE 3 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-22 11:56 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote in message <970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk>... >I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if >there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for >playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the >shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a >class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. I >am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot >discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An embedded >programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and start >teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an >educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world >systems. > >(Does anyone smell commercial possibilities here? :-) It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and cheap PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a matter of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have to write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card. You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-22 11:56 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 15:17 UTC (permalink / raw) I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course, embedded programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware - you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds, D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student projects and representative of real-world development. I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal fuss, let me know... Thanks. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message news:972uon$729@news.kvaerner.com... > It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and cheap > PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a matter > of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have to > write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card. > > You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-02-23 20:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-23 17:22 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote >I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of >any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal >fuss, let me know... Thanks. Check with oarcorp. They have something about a GNAT/RTEMS combo on their front page. That might be worthwhile to examine. I suspect that anything quick and easy for a student/hobbyist to do is hard to find information on. It seems to be the Ada way. I think the PR value of such a "kit" would be incalcuable because everybody could see that Ada is easy. It would be ridiculously easy to check it out for yourself. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-23 20:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 15:01 ` John Kern 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 20:40 UTC (permalink / raw) I have some small familiarity with GNAT/RTEMS - which is to say I basically know what it does, but with no knowledge of how it actually does it. Basically, this wouldn't be a bad way to go.; Let's say, for the sake of argument, that one had a version of GNAT that ran on a PC and was targeted to a bare board MC68040 processor. One would need to compile RTEMS to this processor to have the runtime services needed by Ada for tasking, etc. From there, you would compile your application using GNAT and link it with RTEMS & then have an image that would be executable on this bare board MC68040. (Someone correct me if I'm fundamentally wrong - details at this point don't concern me...) Key to this would be that you'd need a fairly sophisticated linkage editor that ran on the PC and targeted the 68040. You'd need to be able to locate chunks of code/data in specific memory locations because presumably you'd have things like EEPROM and DMA devices, etc.You'd have to get out of it some kind of load image in a usable format (ELF or S-Records or whatever). From there you need some means of getting the load image into the bare board machine. That means having a PROM burner or some kind of bootstrap code loaded on the machine to pull data off of some port and start loading it at addresses required. The bootstrap needs some kind of software at the other end of the port to read the loadable image and feed it the bits & bytes in some protocol it understands. Now the important thing to note here is that this is the *BARE MINIMUM* one needs *JUST TO GET STARTED PROGRAMMING*. (sorry for shouting!) You'd still want things like a source level debugger, some kind of on-board monitor to wrap with your application, probably some software packages that could be used to shield you from device specifics (although that would obviously be one of the student exercises, you'd want them to be able to work with them only as required by the course & just have some stuff available for the other devices.) We could obviously go on with wanting things - like a JTAG/EJTAG interface with software at the PC end, etc. I can easily imagine *wanting* a lot! :-) While we're at it, we'd need real good documentation for the SBC and its hardware devices because you couldn't expect students to just simply *know* how to write code for Brand X A/D Converter and it would be a lot to ask them to go start pestering vendors for data books. (Hell! It's a whole lot to ask of us professionals - but at least we can justify it along the lines of "If the company is too *stupid* to go get me the manuals I need, I'll burn up their money surfing the net or calling the companies until I get it.) Documentation would have to extend to the overall system as well. Someone has to answer the question "How do I go from some source file with the embedded "Hello World" program in it to code actually cycling in the box?" From there, we'd need to either find or write some kind of college level text that addressed embedded programming from the level of all the things that will go on in our little SBC. I have only run into one text that addresses this at all ("Programming Embedded Systems In C And C++" by Michael Barr) and it only addresses some of the things you'd likely see in an embedded computer - and as is obvious, not from the Ada perspective. (If you know of others, I'd be glad to hear about them. I'd like to see something that dealt with things like A/Ds and the devices that live at the other end of them.) Now the problem as I see it is this: Nobody has all these pieces pulled together all in one place using Ada (at a low price, at least), but it *DOES* exist (mostly) for C and maybe C++. You can go to any number of vendors who will sell you an SBC development kit that will plug into your PC with all the appropriate software at the PC end, etc. You can be up and programming the card with C in short order and maybe the only thing you're really missing is the college level text. Pulling together all this stuff in Ada is certainly feasable, but it would be a non-trivial amount of work. Since great minds think alike, I'll agree with you that the PR value for Ada would be high because it would demonstrate how easy Ada is relative to C in this arena. I'd go one step further in saying that *IF* the kit were to exist, a *LOT* of EE profs would be tempted to structure a course around it because it would eliminate a ton of work for them - hence even more PR value. Throw on top of it that every EE student who's first embedded experience is Ada would likely go on to industry with a favorable impression of Ada and start pushing for its adoption. And of course, if the card itself were fairly generally useful, you've got a commercial market for it as well. My only problem with this idea is that my full-time occupation is not the development of such kits and as a speculative, part-time venture I just don't think I've got the time to do it. (Not in any reasonable timeframe!) Maybe a vendor or professor or idle-rich-kid (or several of them) might get interested and start pulling the pieces together. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message news:97668g$718@news.kvaerner.com... > > Marin David Condic wrote > >I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of > >any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > >fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > Check with oarcorp. They have something about a GNAT/RTEMS combo on their front > page. That might be worthwhile to examine. > > I suspect that anything quick and easy for a student/hobbyist to do is hard to > find information on. It seems to be the Ada way. I think the PR value of such a > "kit" would be incalcuable because everybody could see that Ada is easy. It > would be ridiculously easy to check it out for yourself. > > Greetings, > > > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 20:40 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-13 15:01 ` John Kern 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: John Kern @ 2001-03-13 15:01 UTC (permalink / raw) I think there exists a free version of CodeWarrior that addresses most of these issues for Palm programming. The downloading mechanism is build into the cradle mechanism and the docs should be available. I've even seen a PC emulator somewhere. Marin David Condic wrote: > > I have some small familiarity with GNAT/RTEMS - which is to say I basically > know what it does, but with no knowledge of how it actually does it. > Basically, this wouldn't be a bad way to go.; Let's say, for the sake of > argument, that one had a version of GNAT that ran on a PC and was targeted > to a bare board MC68040 processor. One would need to compile RTEMS to this > processor to have the runtime services needed by Ada for tasking, etc. From > there, you would compile your application using GNAT and link it with RTEMS > & then have an image that would be executable on this bare board MC68040. > (Someone correct me if I'm fundamentally wrong - details at this point don't > concern me...) > > Key to this would be that you'd need a fairly sophisticated linkage editor > that ran on the PC and targeted the 68040. You'd need to be able to locate > chunks of code/data in specific memory locations because presumably you'd > have things like EEPROM and DMA devices, etc.You'd have to get out of it > some kind of load image in a usable format (ELF or S-Records or whatever). > > From there you need some means of getting the load image into the bare board > machine. That means having a PROM burner or some kind of bootstrap code > loaded on the machine to pull data off of some port and start loading it at > addresses required. The bootstrap needs some kind of software at the other > end of the port to read the loadable image and feed it the bits & bytes in > some protocol it understands. > > Now the important thing to note here is that this is the *BARE MINIMUM* one > needs *JUST TO GET STARTED PROGRAMMING*. (sorry for shouting!) You'd still > want things like a source level debugger, some kind of on-board monitor to > wrap with your application, probably some software packages that could be > used to shield you from device specifics (although that would obviously be > one of the student exercises, you'd want them to be able to work with them > only as required by the course & just have some stuff available for the > other devices.) We could obviously go on with wanting things - like a > JTAG/EJTAG interface with software at the PC end, etc. I can easily imagine > *wanting* a lot! :-) > > While we're at it, we'd need real good documentation for the SBC and its > hardware devices because you couldn't expect students to just simply *know* > how to write code for Brand X A/D Converter and it would be a lot to ask > them to go start pestering vendors for data books. (Hell! It's a whole lot > to ask of us professionals - but at least we can justify it along the lines > of "If the company is too *stupid* to go get me the manuals I need, I'll > burn up their money surfing the net or calling the companies until I get > it.) Documentation would have to extend to the overall system as well. > Someone has to answer the question "How do I go from some source file with > the embedded "Hello World" program in it to code actually cycling in the > box?" > > From there, we'd need to either find or write some kind of college level > text that addressed embedded programming from the level of all the things > that will go on in our little SBC. I have only run into one text that > addresses this at all ("Programming Embedded Systems In C And C++" by > Michael Barr) and it only addresses some of the things you'd likely see in > an embedded computer - and as is obvious, not from the Ada perspective. (If > you know of others, I'd be glad to hear about them. I'd like to see > something that dealt with things like A/Ds and the devices that live at the > other end of them.) > > Now the problem as I see it is this: Nobody has all these pieces pulled > together all in one place using Ada (at a low price, at least), but it > *DOES* exist (mostly) for C and maybe C++. You can go to any number of > vendors who will sell you an SBC development kit that will plug into your PC > with all the appropriate software at the PC end, etc. You can be up and > programming the card with C in short order and maybe the only thing you're > really missing is the college level text. Pulling together all this stuff in > Ada is certainly feasable, but it would be a non-trivial amount of work. > > Since great minds think alike, I'll agree with you that the PR value for Ada > would be high because it would demonstrate how easy Ada is relative to C in > this arena. I'd go one step further in saying that *IF* the kit were to > exist, a *LOT* of EE profs would be tempted to structure a course around it > because it would eliminate a ton of work for them - hence even more PR > value. Throw on top of it that every EE student who's first embedded > experience is Ada would likely go on to industry with a favorable impression > of Ada and start pushing for its adoption. And of course, if the card itself > were fairly generally useful, you've got a commercial market for it as well. > > My only problem with this idea is that my full-time occupation is not the > development of such kits and as a speculative, part-time venture I just > don't think I've got the time to do it. (Not in any reasonable timeframe!) > Maybe a vendor or professor or idle-rich-kid (or several of them) might get > interested and start pulling the pieces together. > > MDC > > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message > news:97668g$718@news.kvaerner.com... > > > > Marin David Condic wrote > > >I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think > of > > >any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with > minimal > > >fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > > > Check with oarcorp. They have something about a GNAT/RTEMS combo on their > front > > page. That might be worthwhile to examine. > > > > I suspect that anything quick and easy for a student/hobbyist to do is > hard to > > find information on. It seems to be the Ada way. I think the PR value of > such a > > "kit" would be incalcuable because everybody could see that Ada is easy. > It > > would be ridiculously easy to check it out for yourself. > > > > Greetings, > > > > > > > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers 2001-02-23 20:47 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 21:08 ` Randy Brukardt 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson 2001-03-13 14:55 ` John Kern 3 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: James Rogers @ 2001-02-23 19:49 UTC (permalink / raw) Another possibility, although not exactly free, is the PC/104 solution provided by Aonix and PharLap. PharLap offers a very nice PC/104 RTOS implementing a subset of the Win32 API. Aonix bundles this solution with an Ada compiler that runs on a PC. The Aonix Ada compiler can target either the PC or the PC/104 board, allowing simple unit testing of many packages on the PC, and the remaining testing on the PC/104 board. The PharLap operating system comes with a useful collection of capabilities including LAN networking (ftp, telnet, http, TCP/IP, etc.) There could be additional packages created for this solution to address devices not on the PC/104 hardware stack, such as RS232 ports, etc. On my previous job I successfully used this system to develop robotic control systems interfacing both with user interface devices and vehicle control interfaces. Robotic devices were all manufactured by our company and controlled through a Controller Area Network (CAN) interface. We also manufactured our own PC/104 CAN card which plugs into the PC/104 hardware stack. Information about those products can be viewed at http://www.omnitech.com Jim Rogers Colorado Springs, Colorado USA Marin David Condic wrote: > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers @ 2001-02-23 20:47 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 21:08 ` Randy Brukardt 1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 20:47 UTC (permalink / raw) Now that might just be the basis of an embedded programming course. As I said elsewhere, I think it is a bit like cheating to have some version of an RTOS like Windows or Unix on the card - but realistically speaking, that is what a lot of students will see when they get out of school. (I'd like to see them understand what the LynxOS or VxWorks guys have to do to get *their* code to run!) I suppose if you add some specialized device cards to the stack, then you're providing them with the opportunity to gain the low-level access experience on at least some fronts. I'll check out the site & take a look at Aonix again to see how much of the solution may already be there. (And at what price!!! $$$$) Maybe a solution is within grasp? MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "James Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:3A96BF36.5E9B327@worldnet.att.net... > Another possibility, although not exactly free, is the PC/104 solution > provided by Aonix and PharLap. > > PharLap offers a very nice PC/104 RTOS implementing a subset of the > Win32 API. Aonix bundles this solution with an Ada compiler that runs > on a PC. The Aonix Ada compiler can target either the PC or the > PC/104 board, allowing simple unit testing of many packages on the > PC, and the remaining testing on the PC/104 board. > > The PharLap operating system comes with a useful collection of > capabilities including LAN networking (ftp, telnet, http, TCP/IP, > etc.) > > There could be additional packages created for this solution to > address devices not on the PC/104 hardware stack, such as RS232 > ports, etc. > > On my previous job I successfully used this system to develop > robotic control systems interfacing both with user interface > devices and vehicle control interfaces. Robotic devices were all > manufactured by our company and controlled through a Controller > Area Network (CAN) interface. We also manufactured our own > PC/104 CAN card which plugs into the PC/104 hardware stack. > > Information about those products can be viewed at > http://www.omnitech.com > > Jim Rogers > Colorado Springs, Colorado USA > > Marin David Condic wrote: > > > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of > > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers 2001-02-23 20:47 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-02-23 21:08 ` Randy Brukardt 1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2001-02-23 21:08 UTC (permalink / raw) James Rogers wrote in message <3A96BF36.5E9B327@worldnet.att.net>... >Another possibility, although not exactly free, is the PC/104 solution >provided by Aonix and PharLap. > >PharLap offers a very nice PC/104 RTOS implementing a subset of the >Win32 API. You can use the PharLap kit with the Windows version of Janus/Ada, as well. While we don't actually sell a bundled version, we will provide support for the combination. Randy Brukardt R.R. Software, Inc. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers @ 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson 2001-02-23 22:26 ` Jerry Petrey ` (2 more replies) 2001-03-13 14:55 ` John Kern 3 siblings, 3 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Hans-Olof Danielsson @ 2001-02-23 21:21 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada Another option is the Lego Mindstorm robotics kit. The robotics contains a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which is supported by the latest GCC version. Recently there was a posting on the *crossgcc* list regarding building a C cross compiler for H8 with GNU/Linux as host , so there is at least a GCC-based C cross compilor. When GNAT moves to GCC common source tree ( according to earlier posting on this cla-list, that is planed for GCC 3.1 ) it shouldn�t be to difficult to build a GNAT cross compiler for H8. It might be equaly easy ( or difficult ) with GCC 2.81 ( if it supports H8 ) used for GNAT 3.13p. The next step would then be to build a binding to the robotic ROM image, making it possible to control the robot from Ada. HOD Hans-Olof Danielsson, Danitek AB, Dragspelsv. 20, S-732 32 Arboga, Sweden Tel: int +46 589 140 38, Email: Hans-Olof.Danielsson@swipnet.se Web: www.node98.com/danitek, Member of Node98 www.node98.com "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote: > > I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It > looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some > retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course, embedded > programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware - > you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the > hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds, > D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student > projects and representative of real-world development. > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > MDC > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > > > "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message > news:972uon$729@news.kvaerner.com... > > It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and cheap > > PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a > matter > > of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have > to > > write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card. > > > > You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize. > > > _______________________________________________ > comp.lang.ada mailing list > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org > http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson @ 2001-02-23 22:26 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 2001-02-23 22:26 UTC (permalink / raw) Hans-Olof Danielsson wrote: > > Another option is the Lego Mindstorm robotics kit. > > The robotics contains a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which is supported by the > latest GCC version. Recently there was a posting on the *crossgcc* list > regarding building a C cross compiler for H8 with GNU/Linux as host , so > there is at least a GCC-based C cross compilor. > > When GNAT moves to GCC common source tree ( according to earlier posting on > this cla-list, that is planed for GCC 3.1 ) it shouldn�t be to difficult to > build a GNAT cross compiler for H8. It might be equaly easy ( or difficult ) > with GCC 2.81 ( if it supports H8 ) used for GNAT 3.13p. > > The next step would then be to build a binding to the robotic ROM image, > making it possible to control the robot from Ada. > > HOD > There is a GNAT Ada interface for the Mindstorms kit available at: http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/adamindstorms.htm It is not complete but a nice start. Jerry ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jerry Petrey -- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation, Guidance, & Control -- Raytheon Missile Systems - Member Team Ada & Team Forth -- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson 2001-02-23 22:26 ` Jerry Petrey @ 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Rush Kester @ 2001-03-05 19:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada There are two Ada interfaces to the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit already available. One is Ada to NQC developed by Barry Fagin at the US Air Force Academy, see http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/adamindstorms.htm The other is a binding Lego's SPIRIT.OCX active X control developed by David Botton, see http://www.adapower.com/gnatcom/mindstorm.zip Rush Kester Software Systems Engineer Hans-Olof Danielsson wrote: > Another option is the Lego Mindstorm robotics kit. > > The robotics contains a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which is supported by the > latest GCC version. Recently there was a posting on the *crossgcc* list > regarding building a C cross compiler for H8 with GNU/Linux as host , so > there is at least a GCC-based C cross compilor. > > When GNAT moves to GCC common source tree ( according to earlier posting on > this cla-list, that is planed for GCC 3.1 ) it shouldn�t be to difficult to > build a GNAT cross compiler for H8. It might be equaly easy ( or difficult ) > with GCC 2.81 ( if it supports H8 ) used for GNAT 3.13p. > > The next step would then be to build a binding to the robotic ROM image, > making it possible to control the robot from Ada. > > HOD > > Hans-Olof Danielsson, Danitek AB, Dragspelsv. 20, S-732 32 Arboga, Sweden > Tel: int +46 589 140 38, Email: Hans-Olof.Danielsson@swipnet.se > Web: www.node98.com/danitek, Member of Node98 www.node98.com > > "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote: > > > > I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It > > looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some > > retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course, > embedded > > programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware - > > you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the > > hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds, > > D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student > > projects and representative of real-world development. > > > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think > of > > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > > > MDC > > -- > > Marin David Condic > > Senior Software Engineer > > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > > Enabling the digital revolution > > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > > > > > > > "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message > > news:972uon$729@news.kvaerner.com... > > > It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and > cheap > > > PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a > > matter > > > of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have > > to > > > write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card. > > > > > > You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > comp.lang.ada mailing list > > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org > > http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada -- Rush Kester Software Systems Engineer AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. email: rush.kester@jhuapl.edu phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime) fax: (240) 228-6779 http://hometown.aol.com/rwkester/myhomepage/index.html ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson 2001-02-23 22:26 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester @ 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2001-03-10 18:52 ` Singlespeeder 2 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Rush Kester @ 2001-03-05 19:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: comp.lang.ada There are two Ada interfaces to the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit already available. One is Ada to NQC developed by Barry Fagin at the US Air Force Academy, see http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/adamindstorms.htm The other is a binding Lego's SPIRIT.OCX active X control developed by David Botton, see http://www.adapower.com/gnatcom/mindstorm.zip Rush Kester Software Systems Engineer Hans-Olof Danielsson wrote: > Another option is the Lego Mindstorm robotics kit. > > The robotics contains a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which is supported by the > latest GCC version. Recently there was a posting on the *crossgcc* list > regarding building a C cross compiler for H8 with GNU/Linux as host , so > there is at least a GCC-based C cross compilor. > > When GNAT moves to GCC common source tree ( according to earlier posting on > this cla-list, that is planed for GCC 3.1 ) it shouldn�t be to difficult to > build a GNAT cross compiler for H8. It might be equaly easy ( or difficult ) > with GCC 2.81 ( if it supports H8 ) used for GNAT 3.13p. > > The next step would then be to build a binding to the robotic ROM image, > making it possible to control the robot from Ada. > > HOD > > Hans-Olof Danielsson, Danitek AB, Dragspelsv. 20, S-732 32 Arboga, Sweden > Tel: int +46 589 140 38, Email: Hans-Olof.Danielsson@swipnet.se > Web: www.node98.com/danitek, Member of Node98 www.node98.com > > "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote: > > > > I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It > > looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some > > retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course, > embedded > > programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware - > > you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the > > hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds, > > D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student > > projects and representative of real-world development. > > > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think > of > > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > > > > MDC > > -- > > Marin David Condic > > Senior Software Engineer > > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > > Enabling the digital revolution > > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > > > > > > > "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message > > news:972uon$729@news.kvaerner.com... > > > It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and > cheap > > > PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a > > matter > > > of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have > > to > > > write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card. > > > > > > You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > comp.lang.ada mailing list > > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org > > http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada -- Rush Kester Software Systems Engineer AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. email: rush.kester@jhuapl.edu phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime) fax: (240) 228-6779 http://hometown.aol.com/rwkester/myhomepage/index.html ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester @ 2001-03-10 18:52 ` Singlespeeder 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Singlespeeder @ 2001-03-10 18:52 UTC (permalink / raw) The inferno operating system can export a namespace to the Lego brick using styx. But are there any Ada compilers for Inferno? see http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/lego1.html nick ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson @ 2001-03-13 14:55 ` John Kern 3 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: John Kern @ 2001-03-13 14:55 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It > looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some > retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course, embedded > programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware - > you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the > hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds, > D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student > projects and representative of real-world development. > > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think of > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal > fuss, let me know... Thanks. > A readily available computer that comes to mind would be a Palm OS computer of some kind. It may be a tricky to demonstrate the real-time aspects, but the embedded parts should still be similar to the kinds of things needed for SBCs, ie. memory maps, low level key debouncing, display memory map, etc. There is an unused on-board microphone on my Visor. The people at the Mathworks have a Stateflow code generation demo at: http://www.mathworks.com/company/digest/december00/codegen.shtml They even indicate that the processor is a Motorola 68328 for which a GNAT port might already exist. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Model railroad package (was: Re: Increased Interest In Ada?) 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-22 11:56 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-02-26 23:49 ` Dirk Craeynest 2001-03-10 3:37 ` Increased Interest In Ada? DuckE 3 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Dirk Craeynest @ 2001-02-26 23:49 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote: > I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering > departments if there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) > Ada environment for playing around with embedded computing. [...] > I am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class [...] > If [...] was packaged as "An embedded programming course in a bag" so > that a prof could just pick it up and start teaching it, this might > go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an educational tool as well > as a practical tool for building real-world systems. > > (Does anyone smell commercial possibilities here? :-) Some time ago, John McCormick told me he was looking into exactly that: commercialising the hardware and software for his model railroad class in order for others to be able to buy it "off the shelf" and use it for similar classes at other universities. I contacted him to check what progress has been made. John's reply is reposted here for your information, with his approval (see below). Dirk (Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be for Ada-Belgium e-mail) -- Dirk Craeynest | Email Dirk.Craeynest@offis.be | Ada-Belgium Offis nv/sa - Aubay Group | Phone +32(2)725.40.25 | Ada-Europe Weiveldlaan 41/32 | +32(2)729.97.36 (work) | ACM SIGAda B-1930 Zaventem, Belgium | Fax +32(2)725.40.12 | Team Ada *** Intl. Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe'2001 *** May 14-18, 2001, Leuven, Belgium **** http://www.ada-europe.org/ *** --- Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 08:35:15 -0600 To: Dirk Craeynest <Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be> From: John McCormick <mccormic@cs.uni.edu> Subject: Re: Model railroad package? (2nd attempt) Hi Dirk! Just got back from a conference and am trying to get through all of the e-mail that accumulated. Yes we are still missing a good deal from the old server. I don't follow comp.lang.ada. I am indeed working on just such a project. Ultimately it would include: 1. Printed circuit boards to make it easy to connect a model railroad to one or more computers. The connections are made through D/A, A/D, and digital I/O on the computer end which should make it possible to use just about any computer 2. An Ada environment for developing software. 3. A sample program that can be easily adapted to any railroad geometry. 4. An undergraduate level introductory textbook on real-time embedded systems based on the train layout. Of course, it will use Ada as the development language. This piece of the project is still in the dreaming stage. The hardware development is being supported by two local corporations: Rockwell-Collins (avionics) and Maytag (household appliances). My target date for completing the hardware is the end of this summer. Feel free to pass this information on to anyone interested. John ------------------------------------------------------- John W. McCormick mccormick@cs.uni.edu Computer Science Department john.mccormick@acm.org University of Northern Iowa voice (319) 273-6056 Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0507 fax (319) 273-7123 http://www.cs.uni.edu/~mccormic/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2001-02-26 23:49 ` Model railroad package (was: Re: Increased Interest In Ada?) Dirk Craeynest @ 2001-03-10 3:37 ` DuckE 2001-03-12 14:53 ` Marin David Condic 3 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: DuckE @ 2001-03-10 3:37 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2240 bytes --] "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote in message news:970ma1$1l7$1@nh.pace.co.uk... > I could imagine Ada being popular in electrical engineering departments if > there were a convenient and inexpensive (maybe free?) Ada environment for > playing around with embedded computing. It would have to work "off the > shelf" with readily available hardware so that some prof could build a > class/lab around it & students could afford to play with it on their own. I > am thinking of Dr. McCormick's model railroad class or the Lego robot > discussed here a while ago. If either of these was packaged as "An embedded > programming course in a bag" so that a prof could just pick it up and start > teaching it, this might go a long way toward encouraging Ada as an > educational tool as well as a practical tool for building real-world > systems. > I have been thinking that GNAT/RTEMS might in the not-too-distant future provide just such an environment. Unfortunately the two are somewhat out of sync right now. I belive the situation will be much better when GCC 3.0 (or 3.1) comes out later this year (hopefully). I envision old PC's as an ideal target for students wanting to play around with embedded work since 486's are, at least in my area, cheap and easy to come by since nobody wants them any more. SteveD > (Does anyone smell commercial possibilities here? :-) > > MDC > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ > > > > "Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message > news:slrn997li7.193.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no... > > On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:27:16 +0100, Frank wrote: > > >Hi! > > > > > >Are there Ada courses on NTNU? > > > > Not that I know of. The Computer Science dep uses Java and C++ I think, > > but perhaps the Electronics department use some Ada. Sadly the > > introductory computer courses are now in Fortran and Java. :-( > > > > -- > > Preben Randhol ------------------- http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/ -- > > �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.� > > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-10 3:37 ` Increased Interest In Ada? DuckE @ 2001-03-12 14:53 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 7:50 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-12 14:53 UTC (permalink / raw) Old PCs may have their advantages, but I'd like to see a setup that had features this wouldn't necessarily provide. For one thing - just the pure "bare board" nature of embedded computing might not be well illustrated by a PC, considering they already have prefabricated solutions to typical embedded problems like "How do I actually get code loaded into this board & cycling?" For another thing, they don't commonly have things like EEPROM, A/D converters & discretes on-board. (You'd like to give students a machine that is not what they are typically used to and pose the question "Well, how are you going to solve Problem X when you don't have a disk drive and a video monitor available???") You might also want a development kit that reflected as much as possible current state-of-the-art hardware. If one were to go to all the trouble of pulling the pieces together, it might be nice if there were commercial spinoffs as well. :-) If you look around a little, you'll notice there are available SBC's with development kits that are priced in the small-handful-of hundreds-of dollars ($200..$500?) I don't think the hardware cost (until you get into peripherials!) needs to be so high as to send someone off looking for old PC boards at the junk yard. The problem is that they typically are available only with a C compiler environment. It would be nice to have a similar setup with an Ada compiler & some other related stuff that would make it useful for education and possibly "real world" usage........ MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "DuckE" <nospam_steved94@home.com> wrote in message news:Yjhq6.539700$U46.16061033@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com... > > I envision old PC's as an ideal target for students wanting to play around > with embedded work since 486's are, at least in my area, cheap and easy to > come by since nobody wants them any more. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-12 14:53 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-13 7:50 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-03-13 14:48 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-13 7:50 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote in message <98inu2$1fr$1@nh.pace.co.uk>... >Old PCs may have their advantages, but I'd like to see a setup that had >features this wouldn't necessarily provide. For one thing - just the pure >"bare board" nature of embedded computing might not be well illustrated by a >PC, considering they already have prefabricated solutions to typical >embedded problems like "How do I actually get code loaded into this board & >cycling?" For another thing, they don't commonly have things like EEPROM, >A/D converters & discretes on-board. (You'd like to give students a machine >that is not what they are typically used to and pose the question "Well, how >are you going to solve Problem X when you don't have a disk drive and a >video monitor available???") You might also want a development kit that >reflected as much as possible current state-of-the-art hardware. If one were >to go to all the trouble of pulling the pieces together, it might be nice if >there were commercial spinoffs as well. :-) Doing this should be a two stage approach. Stage 1 is using off the shelf hardware like a standard PC. Stage 2 would involve working on an embedded kit. That way the money last. I don't think embedded intel kits are particularly cheap. And if you want a kit for everybody then it isn't cheap anymore. As for what you can connect to a PC; only your imagination limits you. The last two issues of Elektor has articles on a DIY PCI card. The card is available so that you can use it for prototyping. All sorts of things are possible. Then we have parallell and serial ports, network cards, scsi and gpib controllers, etc. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-13 7:50 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-13 14:48 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 15:42 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-03-14 2:13 ` Jeffrey Carter 0 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-13 14:48 UTC (permalink / raw) I think that misses the point. The point was to create an environment in which students could learn techniques for programming embedded computers. If you give them a PC as the target, it pretty much defeats the whole game since it looks just about like any other kind of programming. Especially if you give them a PC with some version of MS-DOS or Windoze on it since that just about eliminates the need for them to develop their own OS code. Sure, hooking PCs to stuff and writing software for it can be a good realtime experience, but I was looking at the notion of providing an environment that reflects a whole different kind of problem space. Just for grins, I plugged some words into Google and turned up: http://www.zworld.com/index.html - you might pay them a visit and look at the cost of their boards/development products. They're advertising their "RabbitCore 2000" development kit for $169. (I'm sure you can plus it up with plenty of options, but that's not a bad starting point, is it?) If there was a little SBC like this with an Ada compiler, I think it might make a good basis for an embedded programming class.... MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message news:98kjgv$3j69@news.kvaerner.com... > Doing this should be a two stage approach. Stage 1 is using off the shelf > hardware like a standard PC. Stage 2 would involve working on an embedded > kit. That way the money last. I don't think embedded intel kits are > particularly cheap. And if you want a kit for everybody then it isn't cheap > anymore. > > As for what you can connect to a PC; only your imagination limits you. The > last two issues of Elektor has articles on a DIY PCI card. The card is > available so that you can use it for prototyping. All sorts of things are > possible. Then we have parallell and serial ports, network cards, scsi and > gpib controllers, etc. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-13 14:48 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-13 15:42 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-03-13 16:31 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-14 2:13 ` Jeffrey Carter 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-13 15:42 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote in message <98lc03$23l$1@nh.pace.co.uk>... >I think that misses the point. The point was to create an environment in >which students could learn techniques for programming embedded computers. If >you give them a PC as the target, it pretty much defeats the whole game >since it looks just about like any other kind of programming. Especially if >you give them a PC with some version of MS-DOS or Windoze on it since that >just about eliminates the need for them to develop their own OS code. The point is to phase things in. Having MSDOS onboard is nice when you teach them how to handle interrupts, sampling instruments, snooping the network card, etc. After they master that is the time to go furter. Don't let them run into the wall at full speed. Let them learn a bit first, get some experience. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-13 15:42 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-13 16:31 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-13 16:31 UTC (permalink / raw) Well, I suppose you could have a "Intro To Realtime Programming - 101" class that used PCs/MS-DOS as the basis & let students work with things that have some realtime requirement. But there should be a "Embedded System Programming - 201(301? 401?)" course that involves a SBC with no OS and all the typical problems that go with that. This is where I'd want to aim the development kit. If all you want to do is teach some elements of realtime systems, then you can get GNAT off-the-shelf and load it on a PC and just design your course around it. If you want to teach "real" embedded programming, you've got to have a "real" embedded machine, etc., and your problem quickly becomes "no Ada for that setup." I was sort of shooting in the direction of "What would it take to get an Ada Development Kit suitable for that sort of course..." MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message news:98lf4h$jbe2@news.kvaerner.com... > The point is to phase things in. Having MSDOS onboard is nice when you teach > them how to handle interrupts, sampling instruments, snooping the network > card, etc. After they master that is the time to go furter. Don't let them > run into the wall at full speed. Let them learn a bit first, get some > experience. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-13 14:48 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 15:42 ` Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-14 2:13 ` Jeffrey Carter 2001-03-14 21:36 ` Tucker Taft 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Jeffrey Carter @ 2001-03-14 2:13 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > Just for grins, I plugged some words into Google and turned up: > http://www.zworld.com/index.html - you might pay them a visit and look at > the cost of their boards/development products. They're advertising their > "RabbitCore 2000" development kit for $169. (I'm sure you can plus it up > with plenty of options, but that's not a bad starting point, is it?) If > there was a little SBC like this with an Ada compiler, I think it might make > a good basis for an embedded programming class.... This looks interesting. Perhaps you could organize a deal between ZWorld for this kit, Averstar for their Ada-to-ANSI-C compiler, and an interested Ada person like MDC to write some simple compilation scripts to hide the C, and still offer it at a price that a student could afford. -- Jeff Carter "I blow my nose on you." Monty Python & the Holy Grail ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-14 2:13 ` Jeffrey Carter @ 2001-03-14 21:36 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-14 21:48 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Tucker Taft @ 2001-03-14 21:36 UTC (permalink / raw) Jeffrey Carter wrote: > > Marin David Condic wrote: > > > > Just for grins, I plugged some words into Google and turned up: > > http://www.zworld.com/index.html - you might pay them a visit and look at > > the cost of their boards/development products. They're advertising their > > "RabbitCore 2000" development kit for $169. (I'm sure you can plus it up > > with plenty of options, but that's not a bad starting point, is it?) If > > there was a little SBC like this with an Ada compiler, I think it might make > > a good basis for an embedded programming class.... > > This looks interesting. Perhaps you could organize a deal between ZWorld > for this kit, Averstar for their Ada-to-ANSI-C compiler, and an > interested Ada person like MDC to write some simple compilation scripts > to hide the C, and still offer it at a price that a student could > afford. Let me know how we could be of help. > > -- > Jeff Carter > "I blow my nose on you." > Monty Python & the Holy Grail -- -Tucker Taft stt@avercom.net http://www.averstar.com/~stt/ Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) Burlington, MA USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar: http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-14 21:36 ` Tucker Taft @ 2001-03-14 21:48 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-15 16:11 ` Tucker Taft 0 siblings, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-14 21:48 UTC (permalink / raw) I'm not sure I'd want to address that particular SBC - it was only an example of the fact that there *are* inexpensive SBCs out there suitable for a lot of things. They just typically come with some version of a C compiler rather than an Ada compiler. Targeting an Ada compiler to the Z-World products may or may not be a good thing. It depends on lots of things - including how "standard" their C compiler is and how popular their board is. Without buying the kit & working with it for some stretch of time, its hard to say if it would be a good target for such an effort. Personally, I think it would be a *better* idea to have a native Ada compiler that produced embedable code for some processor, then find an SBC that used that processor. Gluing an Ada-toC-to-Embedded-Code thing together is just going to ask for trouble and raise the inevitable question of "Why don't I just use C, instead of going through all the extra steps & probably giving up downstream features along the way?..." MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tucker Taft" <stt@averstar.com> wrote in message news:3AAFE454.B079E0F1@averstar.com... > Jeffrey Carter wrote: > > > > Marin David Condic wrote: > > > > > > Just for grins, I plugged some words into Google and turned up: > > > http://www.zworld.com/index.html - you might pay them a visit and look at > > > the cost of their boards/development products. They're advertising their > > > "RabbitCore 2000" development kit for $169. (I'm sure you can plus it up > > > with plenty of options, but that's not a bad starting point, is it?) If > > > there was a little SBC like this with an Ada compiler, I think it might make > > > a good basis for an embedded programming class.... > > > > This looks interesting. Perhaps you could organize a deal between ZWorld > > for this kit, Averstar for their Ada-to-ANSI-C compiler, and an > > interested Ada person like MDC to write some simple compilation scripts > > to hide the C, and still offer it at a price that a student could > > afford. > > Let me know how we could be of help. > > > > > -- > > Jeff Carter > > "I blow my nose on you." > > Monty Python & the Holy Grail > > -- > -Tucker Taft stt@avercom.net http://www.averstar.com/~stt/ > Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) > Burlington, MA USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar: > http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-14 21:48 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-15 16:11 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-15 18:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-16 9:20 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 0 siblings, 2 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Tucker Taft @ 2001-03-15 16:11 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > ... > Personally, I think it would be a *better* idea to have a native Ada > compiler that produced embedable code for some processor, then find an SBC > that used that processor. Gluing an Ada-toC-to-Embedded-Code thing together > is just going to ask for trouble and raise the inevitable question of "Why > don't I just use C, instead of going through all the extra steps & probably > giving up downstream features along the way?..." Actually, one of the interesting things working with the version of our Ada 95 technology that uses C as an intermediate is how it illustrates exactly what you are giving up by going to C. All of the consistency checks performed by Ada at compile-time, plus the additional checks which are performed at run-time when they can't be proved safe by the compiler, are generally all lost when you write in C "by hand." By looking at the generated C you immediately see all the run-time checks that remain, and it makes me cringe to think that people writing by hand in C don't have any of those safety checks performed. And that is *after* our optimizer has already eliminated many of the provably-safe checks. For what it is worth, the "glued together" compiler is actually quite easy to use, and it "feels" like a regular Ada compiler, except that if you want to check up on what the compiler is doing, you can save and look at the generated C code rather than having to look at the generated machine code. By default, the intermediate C code is deleted, so all that is left is a ".obj"/".o" just like a "regular" compiler. > > MDC > > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ -- -Tucker Taft stt@avercom.net http://www.averstar.com/~stt/ Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) Burlington, MA USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar: http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-15 16:11 ` Tucker Taft @ 2001-03-15 18:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-15 18:37 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-16 9:20 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 1 sibling, 1 reply; 61+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-15 18:18 UTC (permalink / raw) Sounds interesting. Obviously, if the programmer doesn't see the C intermediary steps and just gets code out the back end, then its just another Ada compiler. However, I'd still have concerns about gluing it onto someone's embedded C development environment because of the post-compilation stuff. You need to play with the linkage editor & loader and it remains a question in my mind if that is just going to invisibly look like Ada or if you're going to need to treat it more from the intermediate C perspective. After that, you've got to deal with the possible existence of source-level debuggers and other testing tools. Are these going to see the Ada code - or go referencing back to the C code? I am not saying it can't be done or that doing it may not be of value. What I'm saying is that it would likely require quite a bit of investigation just to see what would be involved in doing the job and what quality the finished product would have. After that there is certainly a non-trivial amount of work in pulling the pieces together. If I was actively using the Z-World board and familiar with its development environment, a lot of the assessment would be already in my head. Without a funded mandate to go forth and kill, its hard to justify the time committment. :-) If we had a vendor interested in adding Ada as an additional front-end and was willing to pay to merge the tools, that would really be something. Unless I can talk my current employers into programming Cable-TV boxes in Ada, I'm not likely to find the time to look into it. (Work is the curse of the Language Advocate? :-) MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Tucker Taft" <stt@averstar.com> wrote in message news:3AB0E994.A2B2D3C6@averstar.com... > Actually, one of the interesting things working with the version > of our Ada 95 technology that uses C as an intermediate is how > it illustrates exactly what you are giving up by going to C. > All of the consistency checks performed by Ada at compile-time, > plus the additional checks which are performed at run-time when > they can't be proved safe by the compiler, are generally all lost > when you write in C "by hand." By looking at the generated > C you immediately see all the run-time checks that remain, and > it makes me cringe to think that people writing by hand in C > don't have any of those safety checks performed. And that is *after* > our optimizer has already eliminated many of the provably-safe checks. > > For what it is worth, the "glued together" compiler is actually > quite easy to use, and it "feels" like a regular Ada compiler, except > that if you want to check up on what the compiler is doing, you > can save and look at the generated C code rather than having > to look at the generated machine code. By default, the intermediate > C code is deleted, so all that is left is a ".obj"/".o" just like > a "regular" compiler. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-15 18:18 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-15 18:37 ` Tucker Taft 0 siblings, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Tucker Taft @ 2001-03-15 18:37 UTC (permalink / raw) Marin David Condic wrote: > > Sounds interesting. Obviously, if the programmer doesn't see the C > intermediary steps and just gets code out the back end, then its just > another Ada compiler. However, I'd still have concerns about gluing it onto > someone's embedded C development environment because of the post-compilation > stuff. You need to play with the linkage editor & loader and it remains a > question in my mind if that is just going to invisibly look like Ada or if > you're going to need to treat it more from the intermediate C perspective. There is an "adabuild" linker that does whatever automatic recompilation is required, builds a "main" routine (which elaborates the appropriate library units and calls the Ada main and then the library-level finalizer), and then invokes the target linker to finish the job. It works exactly like the versions of our compiler that don't use C from the user's perspective. > After that, you've got to deal with the possible existence of source-level > debuggers and other testing tools. Are these going to see the Ada code - or > go referencing back to the C code? These see the Ada source (unless you explicitly specify otherwise) thanks to the "#line" directives included in the generated C source code. Ada variable names are carried over into the C in a canonical form (first letter capitalized, all others lower case), which may take some getting used-to, though if you have a debugger that shows the local variables, they can easily be picked out. > > I am not saying it can't be done or that doing it may not be of value. What > I'm saying is that it would likely require quite a bit of investigation just > to see what would be involved in doing the job and what quality the finished > product would have. After that there is certainly a non-trivial amount of > work in pulling the pieces together. If I was actively using the Z-World > board and familiar with its development environment, a lot of the assessment > would be already in my head. Without a funded mandate to go forth and kill, > its hard to justify the time committment. :-) It certainly is not just like falling off a log, but it isn't rocket science either... > > If we had a vendor interested in adding Ada as an additional front-end and > was willing to pay to merge the tools, that would really be something. > Unless I can talk my current employers into programming Cable-TV boxes in > Ada, I'm not likely to find the time to look into it. (Work is the curse of > the Language Advocate? :-) Time is the one commodity whose price never drops... > > MDC > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ -- -Tucker Taft stt@avercom.net http://www.averstar.com/~stt/ Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) Burlington, MA USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar: http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
* Re: Increased Interest In Ada? 2001-03-15 16:11 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-15 18:18 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-03-16 9:20 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 1 sibling, 0 replies; 61+ messages in thread From: Tarjei T. Jensen @ 2001-03-16 9:20 UTC (permalink / raw) Tucker Taft wrote >For what it is worth, the "glued together" compiler is actually >quite easy to use, and it "feels" like a regular Ada compiler, except >that if you want to check up on what the compiler is doing, you >can save and look at the generated C code rather than having >to look at the generated machine code. By default, the intermediate >C code is deleted, so all that is left is a ".obj"/".o" just like >a "regular" compiler. It looks like something a small company could market (part time?). After all there are still a lot of bang left in Z80 (HD180??), 6809 and similar devices. Many would probably be interested in a game boy target. Whether they would be able to pay much is an entirely different matter. Greetings, ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 61+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2001-03-16 9:20 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 61+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2001-02-08 19:12 Increased Interest In Ada? Marin David Condic 2001-02-08 20:36 ` Florian Weimer 2001-02-09 0:16 ` Ken Garlington 2001-02-08 20:40 ` BSCrawford 2001-02-08 23:17 ` JF Harrison 2001-02-09 13:33 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 16:41 ` David Botton 2001-02-09 13:08 ` Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. 2001-02-09 13:38 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:24 ` Ian Wild 2001-02-09 18:40 ` Florian Weimer 2001-02-09 9:35 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 13:36 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-09 14:36 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-09 21:21 ` Ehud Lamm 2001-02-09 21:25 ` Jeffrey D. Cherry 2001-02-12 17:43 ` Stephen Leake 2001-02-13 15:14 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-02-20 20:27 ` Frank 2001-02-21 14:51 ` Preben Randhol 2001-02-21 15:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 20:54 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-21 22:56 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-02-22 10:43 ` Peter Amey 2001-02-22 14:27 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-27 11:28 ` Peter Amey 2001-02-23 4:58 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-23 15:15 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-24 21:40 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-25 15:10 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-26 0:34 ` Cesar Rabak 2001-02-26 14:51 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-26 21:23 ` non-Ada, was " tmoran 2001-02-22 11:56 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-02-23 15:17 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 17:22 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-02-23 20:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 15:01 ` John Kern 2001-02-23 19:49 ` James Rogers 2001-02-23 20:47 ` Marin David Condic 2001-02-23 21:08 ` Randy Brukardt 2001-02-23 21:21 ` Hans-Olof Danielsson 2001-02-23 22:26 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2001-03-05 19:00 ` Rush Kester 2001-03-10 18:52 ` Singlespeeder 2001-03-13 14:55 ` John Kern 2001-02-26 23:49 ` Model railroad package (was: Re: Increased Interest In Ada?) Dirk Craeynest 2001-03-10 3:37 ` Increased Interest In Ada? DuckE 2001-03-12 14:53 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 7:50 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-03-13 14:48 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-13 15:42 ` Tarjei T. Jensen 2001-03-13 16:31 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-14 2:13 ` Jeffrey Carter 2001-03-14 21:36 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-14 21:48 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-15 16:11 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-15 18:18 ` Marin David Condic 2001-03-15 18:37 ` Tucker Taft 2001-03-16 9:20 ` Tarjei T. Jensen
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