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: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,899fc98b2883af4a X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-15 07:27:14 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!lnsnews.lns.cornell.edu!news.litech.org!news-feed.riddles.org.uk!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: achrist@easystreet.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Quality systems (Was: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died)) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 07:29:47 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3EC3A45B.4A34A487@easystreet.com> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <9fa75d42.0305141747.5680c577@posting.google.com> <7GGwa.849701$F1.107635@sccrnsc04> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63844 comp.object:63459 comp.lang.ada:37347 misc.misc:14199 comp.software-eng:19201 Date: 2003-05-15T07:29:47-07:00 List-Id: tmoran@acm.org wrote: > > > In the early days of PCs, people > > had to often write many things from scratch, and address > > CGA and VGA and whatnot cards, and draw pixels, and interface > > to telephony cards... All that would have been practically > > impossible in Ada. > Having done each of those things with both Ada and C, I'm curious why > you could possibly think they were any harder in Ada, much less > "practically impossible". IIRC the early days of the PC were also the early days of Ada. The only Ada I could find that ran on a PC was the Alsys(?) version, requiring a custom hardware upgrade because the compiler required 4 MB or so to run, and many PC's had far less than the 640 kb of ram that the 8088's and 8086's could address. There was not only a 640 kb limit, there were some 64 kb limits on the size of memory segments in most of the PC software prior to 1987. I don't recall ever seeing an Ada product or tool that would run on an 8086 or 8088 without special hardware added. Were there any? Al