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: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-27 07:35:02 PST Path: news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F75A00A.2000007@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? References: <3F74366B.7050303@noplace.com> <3F74DF86.30206@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 14:34:59 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.22.24 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1064673299 209.165.22.24 (Sat, 27 Sep 2003 07:34:59 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 07:34:59 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:29 Date: 2003-09-27T14:34:59+00:00 List-Id: You may be right, but at the end of the day, here's the benefit of my experience: I've been using Ada for 20 years in one capacity or another. I've written big, databasey-workstationish applications for VAX/ALPHA/VMS, Unix and PC platforms. I've done hard realtime embedded Ada code for a variety of systems. I've hacked thousands of little one-shot fixit tools or utilities. Some apps have made extensive use of dynamic data structures and others not at all. In all these cases, I've never once felt even the slightest bit deprived by not having a compiler that had GC. (Its possible one of them might have had it - I never noticed.) Hence, I find it difficult to understand why people regularly bring up GC as some sort of "significant shortcoming" of Ada. Maybe there is some problem domain in which the algorithms tend to depend on GC being around. Midieval Botswainian Lute Music Pattern Recognition, perhaps? But generally, if you build your data structures correctly, you're properly managing the storage anyway and GC should not be an issue. I don't get why it always seems to be one with some folks - yet never enough so that it really motivates adding it to some compiler. MDC Robert I. Eachus wrote: > > > Not quite true. There is a more subtle problem. There have been many > Ada compilers that supported GC over the years, but in every case except > possibly Symbolics, the general purpose garbage collection didn't get > exercised enough and eventually died due to "bit rot".* (The extra cost > of supplying a garbage collector, such as a garbage collected storage > pool for Ada 95 is that you have to test it by forcing garbage > collection by exhausting storage space every time you modify the > compiler. This gets old fast. And calling the GC routines specifically > is not enough.) > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================