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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c1983ae2deb642ab X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-28 14:46:53 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!uwm.edu!newsfeed.cs.wisc.edu!nnxp1.twtelecom.net!news-east.rr.com!chnws02.ne.ipsvc.net!cyclone.ne.ipsvc.net!24.128.8.70!typhoon.ne.ipsvc.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3CF3FAD3.8010303@attbi.com> From: "Robert I. Eachus" Organization: Eachus Associates User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020314 Netscape6/6.2.2 X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada -vs- GNAT References: <3CEFCC05.16C30A69@adaworks.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:42:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.61.239.24 X-Complaints-To: abuse@attbi.com X-Trace: typhoon.ne.ipsvc.net 1022622154 24.61.239.24 (Tue, 28 May 2002 17:42:34 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 17:42:34 EDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:24877 Date: 2002-05-28T21:42:34+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > GNAT is open source; if you want an Ada variant, go fund it! As Robert > keeps pointing out, that was one of the original motivations behind > producing an open source Ada compiler; people (mainly universities) > would be free to play around with the language. Yet no one has done it > yet in a serious way. I have to disagree here. I think that you will find that a lot of ACT customers have taken that approach. However, a strong perception during both the Ada 83 and Ada95 standardization process was that Ada should be extensible in a natural way with attribute, pragmas, and packages. And also that any of these that are generally useful, even if just in a specific doman, and are ready for standardization, belong in the standard. I'd hate to have to try to count the GNAT features that were needed by a specific customer, added to GNAT, then migrated into the area of generally used. Several of these attributes and pragmas are migrating into the standard, even if they officially have yet to do so, others actually made it into the Ada 95 standard before it was approved. I think that this conservatism is a very good thing. There are features (or mis-features depending on your point of view) that were added in Ada 95, and as they became used a need for additional language features became obvious. These are usually first seen in GNAT, but quickly appear in the other Ada compilers. If the need is there, once the ARG can determine what the best way to implement the functionality is, it migrates into all compilers fairly quickly. So Ada really is a much more dynamic standard than people think, and today's Ada 95 is much better than the Ada 95 of 1995. But since the perception is that, of course all these features are part of the standard and there is no fragmenting of the Ada language, a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that this innovation and evolution is not going on. In practice it is, just slow enough--and compatibly enough--that users don't notice.