Re: Development process in the Ada community

[Michael Erdmann <Michael.Erdmann@snafu.de>]

Eric G. Miller wrote:
> In <3CB516E1.9030008@snafu.de>, Michael Erdmann wrote:
> 
> 
>>I personally think this way of working is fairly outdated since
>>it does not realy take the internet as a comminication media into
>>accout.
>>If you compare Ada 95 with Java, then the interesting points are
>>not the languages it self, but the quick development of supporting
>>components around it. If you take Ada 95 there is only a very
>>limited set of predefined libraries standarized and thats it,
>>nothing else. With JPC this is completly different!
>>
> 
> How many changes in the Java language have occurred in the last ten
> years?  How many are fully backwards compatible?  Java aims to be
> a whole platform, but it's a moving target.  What about developers
> who want their libraries and programs to be relevant for more than
> a couple years?  IMHO, rapidly changing languages present a double 
> edged sword.  
> 
> I think the goals of the two languages are somewhat orthogonal. I
> don't think there will ever be a "one size fits all" language.  
> The safety and security features of Ada are very important to
> some folks, for instance. 
> 
> Oh, btw, this "outdated mode" of standardization is one thing that
> drew me to start using Ada vs. something like Java [tm], which is
> owned by Sun.
> 


I am not saying that the old style of standarization make no
sense any more. In the contrary, the core of a lagnuage should
alwys be done like this (i guess), but the situation was as i
remember that Ada development has been founded by gouvermental
organizations, which has changed in the last years.

My argument is not the language it self, but the environment
around it, it should take the fact into account, that there
is a strong open source movement which has to be chanelized
some how by providing a public process which leads to open source
standards.

Regards
    M.Erdmann