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: 103376,8623fab5750cd6aa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <40D030BA.9020909@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: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics References: <40b9c99e$0$268$edfadb0f@dread16.news.tele.dk> <04udnR-eHNChzSbdRVn-vw@gbronline.com> <7J0xc.7371$8k4.269106@news20.bellglobal.com> <1086630278.542788@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <8xlxc.27603$sS2.845496@news20.bellglobal.com> <1086715817.122983@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1086733411.736049@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3Auxc.11998$XY6.1296622@read2.cgocable.net> <40C85035.4020706@noplace.com> <40C9EC3B.60304@noplace.com> <40CD90A4.8030005@noplace.com> <1087234490.635201@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <40CEDEBB.3050209@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 11:37:08 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.23.95 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net 1087385828 209.165.23.95 (Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:37:08 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 04:37:08 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1568 Date: 2004-06-16T11:37:08+00:00 List-Id: Sure it helps. As would runtime checks since they could be used in debugging & turned off for production. I'm not saying that Ada wouldn't help to produce a better quality OS (or any other program for that matter). What I'm saying is that it isn't "Magic". People can do sufficient design & testing on C code to get the same reliability (albeit at probably greater cost) and the big problems with OS stability are typically the kind of things that are not going to get caught by language rules. (Like timing of asynchronous events, etc.) There is a danger with hyping Ada as capable of doing things it can't really do. To those who have developed real world apps in other languages and managed to get them stable & reliable, Ada enthusiasts will look kind of silly claiming that it can only be done in Ada. In other newsgroups, people have claimed that "Ada isn't well suited to OS work..." and their typical response when challenged on this is "Well, show me where it *is* used successfully in OS work?" Small scale realtime OS's can be found (and yes, that counts) but not much in the way of "real" OS's like Linux or Windows. If Ada can really do this (I believe it could) and people want to make claims about how superior it would be at doing this, then there needs to be some proof by demonstration or the claims get dismissed as coming from a bunch of idealogues and kooks. MDC Brian May wrote: > > Ada does more checks at compile time then some languages. I would > assume this would benefit an Ada OS, even if all run-time checks are > turned off. -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "Face it ladies, its not the dress that makes you look fat. Its the FAT that makes you look fat." -- Al Bundy ======================================================================