From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,85034d1ac78a66eb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-09 08:34:53 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!wn2feed!worldnet.att.net!207.217.77.102!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newsmaster1.prod.itd.earthlink.net!newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3C8A3999.2000301@earthlink.net> From: "Ian S. Nelson" Reply-To: nelsonis@earthlink.net.NOSPAM User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Operating System References: <3c77b476.322111671@news.cis.dfn.de> <3C88E0D1.89161C16@despammed.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 16:34:52 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.1.228.145 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net 1015691692 66.1.228.145 (Sat, 09 Mar 2002 08:34:52 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 08:34:52 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net X-Received-Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 08:34:51 PST (newsmaster1.prod.itd.earthlink.net) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20980 Date: 2002-03-09T16:34:52+00:00 List-Id: Wes Groleau wrote: > A pessimist's viewpoint: > > To make an operating system successful, you need > at least one of > > - sufficient quantity of useful applications Needless to say. That doesn't make it a worthless project though. Research and demostrations are powerful. > - sufficient geek appeal to attract developers. I think this clearly exists. Linux and BSD examples and if you do some digging, there are probably 50 to 100 other "free OS" projects being done be individuals all over the world. People are interested in system level stuff. > - sufficent robustness/power/features to overcome > the lack of either of the others. > > To get people to write applications that run on it, > it must have enough users to make people want to > write apps for it. So you have a chicken/egg problem > for the first point. > > For the second, you have the prevailing distaste for > Ada against you ("Us" if you will). I'll go on a limb. I don't think people hate ada. People dislike change to some degree, they dislike hype and they dislike uphill battles. Outside of a few geekier circles I've never heard anything bad about ada other than "The DoD uses it" which isn't really a positive or negative statement about Ada. > On the robustness/power/features point, obviously > Ada has a significant advantage over C/C++/Java. Not really. I think that remains to be seen. Linux doesn't crash a lot. It's not "weapons grade" but we're not talking about that. Code written in Ada isn't going to be better than code in C, C++ or Java by default, which is suggested so many times. It should be cheaper to write it in Ada at the same level. Right now, the benchmark is high, BSD and Linux have solid reputations for being rock solid, and for 99% of the tasks done on computers they are. Implementing a BSD clone in Ada would be fun but you couldn't sell it by saying that it is "more stable" becuase you could never show that, at least not in an interesting way. > BUT, when you multiply the language potential > by the number of developers, Linux still comes > out ahead. In spite of its implementation language, > Linux is quite robust, and it has hundreds of > developers for every AdaOS developer to keep it > that way. Shift the target to features, and > Microsoft will always have you beat there. > They will always sacrifice security/robustness > to beat any competition in features. And their > "if you can't beat 'em, steal 'em" technique > also applies. > > So on the third point, you have say a hundred > developers and a language that scores ten on > some arbitrary rating scale vs. several thousand > developers and a language that scores one or two. > > Do the math and Ada loses. Unfortunately. Well what is the goal? If you're expecting to develop a kernel or full on OS and have it sweep the world by storm, that's probably not going to happen. I've been involved in that industry, I've seen how it works and you're right, Ada would lose because there are so many other factors that are so much bigger than implementation language. I think that there isn't a killer app any more that you could develop and sell ada to the world with. Now if you're trying to build Ada community and show people that good things can be done with Ada, out in the public and not in secure environments, then I think that doing any projects in Ada is a good thing. Building a kernel in Ada could be a very fun project, I'll tell you right now that it's not likely going to displace Linux, BSD or any other big kernel but it could be a fun project none the less and get people interested. Kernels in particular seem to be an area where lot's of people like to tinker and play right now, a kernel in Ada could be readable enough and clean enough to allow non-system hackers to play around with. Ian Nelson