Re: Ada and embedded applications

[Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Chris Campbell wrote [concerning a post about languages for hand-held
devices]:
> 
> This is the exact text (and not my regurgutation of it which is vague).
> 
> --
> [ ... ]
> Ada probably is not reasonable for _most_ such devices.  Ada requires
> exception handling, which takes up quite a bit of memory.  In
> embedded devices, price matters a LOT, and more memory means a higher
> price.  Ada _does_ get used in embedded systems with budgets to
> support it (e.g. the aerospace industry) but in the lower-end of the
> market, exception handling makes it unusable (and the same goes for
> C++).

So, write it in C, with hand-written code for all possible exceptions,
and in Ada, with exceptions and exception handlers, and see which one
"takes up" more memory. The Ada compiler can optimize a lot of the
overhead away, but the C compiler has no choice but to keep it in.

Or is it good to save a few bytes but have your app crash every third
time you run it? In that case Ada can be just as small as C.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"You tiny-brained wipers of other people's bottoms!"
Monty Python & the Holy Grail