Ada & .Net (Rotor)

Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ehud Lamm]

It may be interesting to try and make use of the shared source CLI (aka
Rotor) to provide Ada support on .Net (by porting Gnat, for example). I am
not going to try to analyze the licensing issues here, but be sure to check
them out before you _look_ at the shared source as there are different
opinions on what the license actually means.
Anyway, if you are interested in atacking this project, you may be able to
make use of the Microsoft grants:
http://research.microsoft.com/programs/europe/rotor/

I am not up to date on this but I think there are some interesting open
issues that may be interesting from a researhc point of view. I am thinking
mainly about support for generics.

Ehud Lamm

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

Generics are an interesting topic wrt the problem whether or not this can be
done on the CLR level.
Is it possible to have a generic written in one language and instantiated in
another language? At
least the both languages must agree on the semantics of genericity. I think
this is a current area of
research inside one of the MS dotnet research teams.

An implementation of Ada on top of the current CLR might be interesting as a
reference for a
language that has a long tradition wrt genericty. Ada could be influential
on .NET if it comes at
the right time. And of course it would be very interesting to see how well
Ada could fit into this
whole cross-language interoperability (cross language object system,
exceptions etc.) story.

My 2c
J�rgen

"Ehud Lamm" <mslamm@huji.ac.il> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:a8ch8a$is2$1@news.iucc.ac.il...
> It may be interesting to try and make use of the shared source CLI (aka
> Rotor) to provide Ada support on .Net (by porting Gnat, for example). I am
> not going to try to analyze the licensing issues here, but be sure to
check
> them out before you _look_ at the shared source as there are different
> opinions on what the license actually means.
> Anyway, if you are interested in atacking this project, you may be able to
> make use of the Microsoft grants:
> http://research.microsoft.com/programs/europe/rotor/
>
> I am not up to date on this but I think there are some interesting open
> issues that may be interesting from a researhc point of view. I am
thinking
> mainly about support for generics.
>
> Ehud Lamm
>
>

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ehud Lamm]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:a8ddsd$2nh$01$1@news.t-online.com...
> Generics are an interesting topic wrt the problem whether or not this can
be
> done on the CLR level.
> Is it possible to have a generic written in one language and instantiated
in
> another language? At
> least the both languages must agree on the semantics of genericity. I
think
> this is a current area of
> research inside one of the MS dotnet research teams.

Those interested in generics for the CLR shoud read the paper linked from
http://lambda.weblogs.com/discuss/msgReader$1450

Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN '00 conference on Programming language design
and implementation (PLDI'00).   Design and implementation of generics for
the .NET Common language runtime. Andrew Kennedy, Don Syme

Ehud

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

Well, nevertheless reading the Ada.Net thread I see that most
people don't realize what's going on. Even on CLA you find
mostly MS bashing instead of an educated and skilled discussion.

To me it seems that most people don't realize that the Win2000
kernel is a huge difference to NT4, not to say the W9x kernel.
Win2000 (and better) is for sure one of the best, secure and
stable OS in the market. And .NET on top of this OS provides
a component model for the Internet, something that is far beyond
what Java provides. But it is easier to talk about the past and
bash on MS than to look at what they provide today and for
the future.

So Ada.Net is the story of two entities that carry the burden
of bad fame. Ada is the design by commitee, military only,
verrrrrrbose ancient language and MS is a toy company
crowded by teenage hackers writing software for dummies.
I doubt that this mixture will ever work together;-)

Rotor may change the perception a bit. Now people can look
at the very heart of the .NET architecture, the CLI and the
C# compiler and they can see themself how MS code is
advancing the state of the art. But again, it's easier to bash
that to lern...

J�rgen

P.S.: This is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for my
employer.

"Ehud Lamm" <mslamm@huji.ac.il> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:a8efq6$4kj$1@news.iucc.ac.il...
>
> "Juergen Pfeifer" <juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net> wrote in message
> news:a8ddsd$2nh$01$1@news.t-online.com...
> > Generics are an interesting topic wrt the problem whether or not this
can
> be
> > done on the CLR level.
> > Is it possible to have a generic written in one language and
instantiated
> in
> > another language? At
> > least the both languages must agree on the semantics of genericity. I
> think
> > this is a current area of
> > research inside one of the MS dotnet research teams.
>
> Those interested in generics for the CLR shoud read the paper linked from
> http://lambda.weblogs.com/discuss/msgReader$1450
>
> Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN '00 conference on Programming language
design
> and implementation (PLDI'00).   Design and implementation of generics for
> the .NET Common language runtime. Andrew Kennedy, Don Syme
>
> Ehud
>
>

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote in message news:<a8rot5$6r3$07$1@news.t-online.com>...
> Well, nevertheless reading the Ada.Net thread I see that most
> people don't realize what's going on. Even on CLA you find
> mostly MS bashing instead of an educated and skilled discussion.

Seeing as they are in effect the Standard Oil of the 21'st century,
that shouldn't be suprising. It would make your hair curl to see how
Standard Oil was vilified back around the end of the 19th century.

> To me it seems that most people don't realize that the Win2000
> kernel is a huge difference to NT4, not to say the W9x kernel.

Is it? I haven't noticed any huge differences between 2k and NT4.
There are some noticable cosmetic differences, but (with the exception
of plug-n-play) the underlying Win32 API and the kernel under that is
almost identical.

Certianly, there is a huge difference between the NT kernel (used in
NT, 2k, and XP) and the Win9x series kernels. They are basicly 2
*very* different OS's (the former a full-featured modern OS, the
latter little better than an embedded OS with a GUI) that share a lot
of the same API's and are somewhat binary-compatable.

The biggest problem I see with an Ada .NET is that the .NET licensing
was hand-crafted to be anti-GPL, so it effectively prohibits anyone
from using Gnat to implement it. That means only a company with an
existing proprietary Ada compiler is going to be able to do the job.

> Rotor may change the perception a bit. Now people can look
> at the very heart of the .NET architecture, the CLI and the
> C# compiler and they can see themself how MS code is

Perhaps, but if they do so, they can't apply that knowledge to a GPL
project. That means there's no point in *my* looking at it unless
someone pays me to.

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ingo Marks]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> The biggest problem I see with an Ada .NET is that the .NET licensing
> was hand-crafted to be anti-GPL, so it effectively prohibits anyone
> from using Gnat to implement it. That means only a company with an
> existing proprietary Ada compiler is going to be able to do the job.

Are you sure? AFAIK you may not produce GPL-clones of .NET-functionality 
but it should be allowed to produce .NET-applications with compilers and 
languages whatever you like.

GPL states that if you modify GPL sources then you have to publish your 
modifications. But it doesn't force you to publish your source if you, for 
example, write a new Office from scratch and compile it with gcc. Of 
course, you would be forced to publish your Office code if you would take a 
small piece of some GPL code and enhance it to your final Office.

Ingo

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ingo Marks]

Ingo Marks wrote:

> Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
>> The biggest problem I see with an Ada .NET is that the .NET licensing
>> was hand-crafted to be anti-GPL, so it effectively prohibits anyone
>> from using Gnat to implement it. That means only a company with an
>> existing proprietary Ada compiler is going to be able to do the job.
> 
> Are you sure? AFAIK you may not produce GPL-clones of .NET-functionality
> but it should be allowed to produce .NET-applications with compilers and
> languages whatever you like.
> 
> GPL states that if you modify GPL sources then you have to publish your
> modifications. But it doesn't force you to publish your source if you, for
> example, write a new Office from scratch and compile it with gcc. Of
> course, you would be forced to publish your Office code if you would take
> a small piece of some GPL code and enhance it to your final Office.
> 
> Ingo

Supplement:

One of the officially supported .NET languages is Component Pascal.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/partners/language/default.asp#component
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/partners/language/universityqueensland.asp
http://www2.fit.qut.edu.au/CompSci/PLAS//ComponentPascal/

The license of Component Pascal is GPL-like. I haven't found any usager 
estrictions by Microsoft yet. Why should MS? Wouldn't they shoot into their 
feet if they prohibit the usage of free development tools to produce .NET 
applications?

Gardens Point Component Pascal Copyright

Copyright 1998 � 2002 Queensland University of Technology (QUT). All rights 
reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 
modification are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1.Redistribution of source code must retain the above copyright notice, 
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2.Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, 
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation 
and/or other materials with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE GPCP PROJECT �AS IS� AND ANY EXPRESS OR 
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF 
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE HEREBY DISCLAIMED. 
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE GPCP PROJECT OR QUT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, 
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES 
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; 
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND 
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT 
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF 
THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are 
those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official 
policies, either expressed or implied, of the GPCP project or QUT.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Juergen Pfeifer <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:

: Rotor may change the perception a bit. Now people can look
: at the very heart of the .NET architecture, the CLI and the
: C# compiler and they can see themself how MS code is
: advancing the state of the art.

I think it's more like there is a state of the art, and MS
is capable of making that state visible and, in a particular
way, usable.

Also, it appears that it is not the source for the shipping MS
binaries that you will see.  From the article by Stutz:
    *  There are significant differences in implementation between
this code and the code for Microsoft's commercial CLR implementation,
both to facilitate portability and to make the codebase more approachable.

(Might I throw in that .NET has "pre-competitive"
(MS) and not completely non-competitive (pre)cursors outside of Microsoft?)

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ingo Marks]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/partners/language/default.asp#component

It's sad to see Cobol, Fortran and APL supported by .NET but not 
far-superior Ada.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Ingo Marks <adv@region-nord.de> wrote:
 
: GPL states that if you modify GPL sources then you have to publish your 
: modifications.

Not necessarily.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:
>Rotor may change the perception a bit.
What is it, that "Rotor"? I don't think that it is well-known name.

> Now people can look
>at the very heart of the .NET architecture, the CLI and the
>C# compiler and they can see themself how MS code is
>advancing the state of the art.
All that is possible using that wonderful "Rotor"? And where is it? Is it a
part of .NET distribution, or it is a separate product (either MS or third-party)?

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[David C. Hoos]

The Microsoft Shared Source CLI Implementation (aka "Rotor") is a source
code distribution that includes fully functional implementations of both the
ECMA-334 C# language standard and the ECMA-335 Common Language
Infrastructure standard. These standards together represent a substantial
subset of what is available in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The source code
will build and run under Windows XP or FreeBSD 4.5, and the distribution
contains numerous additional goodies, including a JScript compiler written
entirely in C#, an IL assembler, a disassembler, a debugger, tools for
examining metadata, and other samples and utilities.

Here's a link to the site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?URL=/downloads/sample.asp?ur
l=/msdn-files/027/001/901/msdncompositedoc.xml

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@vib.usr.pu.ru>
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)


> "Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:
> >Rotor may change the perception a bit.
> What is it, that "Rotor"? I don't think that it is well-known name.
>
> > Now people can look
> >at the very heart of the .NET architecture, the CLI and the
> >C# compiler and they can see themself how MS code is
> >advancing the state of the art.
> All that is possible using that wonderful "Rotor"? And where is it? Is it
a
> part of .NET distribution, or it is a separate product (either MS or
third-party)?
>
> _______________________________________________
> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada
>

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

>
> > To me it seems that most people don't realize that the Win2000
> > kernel is a huge difference to NT4, not to say the W9x kernel.
>
> Is it? I haven't noticed any huge differences between 2k and NT4.
> There are some noticable cosmetic differences, but (with the exception
> of plug-n-play) the underlying Win32 API and the kernel under that is
> almost identical.
>
> Certianly, there is a huge difference between the NT kernel (used in
> NT, 2k, and XP) and the Win9x series kernels. They are basicly 2
> *very* different OS's (the former a full-featured modern OS, the
> latter little better than an embedded OS with a GUI) that share a lot
> of the same API's and are somewhat binary-compatable.
>
No, No, No. Then you didn't look close enough. Of course the old
APIs of NT4 mostly stay stable, but under the hood there are a lot
of differences in implementation that makes the huge difference between
Win2K and the NT4 kernel. The whole domain system has been
changed and Active Directory has been introduced. That makes large
Domains much easier to manage. COM+ has been integrated seamlessly,
giving you a world class AppServer functionality including distributed
Transaction monitoring, reliable message queueing and queued components
for free. You have IntelliMirror technology, encrypted filesystem etc. etc.
The networking stack has been improved (giving you IPSec for example)
or a much better DNS, WINS and DHCP implementation than before.
And one could continue this list. Not to mention that the codebase has
been significantly cleaned up. All that results in a much higher stability
of
Win2000 compared to NT4.

J�rgen

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Juergen Pfeifer <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:
: 
:  but under the hood there are a lot
: of differences in implementation that makes the huge difference between
: Win2K and the NT4 kernel. The whole domain system has been
: changed and Active Directory has been introduced. That makes large
: Domains much easier to manage. COM+ has been integrated seamlessly,
: [...]
Is all this really in the kernel? In this case, is the kernel the

best place for mostly user level functionality like COM+?

: giving you a world class AppServer functionality including distributed

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> writes:

> >
> > > To me it seems that most people don't realize that the Win2000
> > > kernel is a huge difference to NT4, not to say the W9x kernel.
> >
> > Is it? I haven't noticed any huge differences between 2k and NT4.
> > There are some noticable cosmetic differences, but (with the exception
> > of plug-n-play) the underlying Win32 API and the kernel under that is
> > almost identical.
> >
> > Certianly, there is a huge difference between the NT kernel (used in
> > NT, 2k, and XP) and the Win9x series kernels. They are basicly 2
> > *very* different OS's (the former a full-featured modern OS, the
> > latter little better than an embedded OS with a GUI) that share a lot
> > of the same API's and are somewhat binary-compatable.
> >
> No, No, No. Then you didn't look close enough. Of course the old
> APIs of NT4 mostly stay stable, but under the hood there are a lot
> of differences in implementation that makes the huge difference between
> Win2K and the NT4 kernel. The whole domain system has been
> changed and Active Directory has been introduced. That makes large
> Domains much easier to manage. COM+ has been integrated seamlessly,
> giving you a world class AppServer functionality including distributed
> Transaction monitoring, reliable message queueing and queued components
> for free. You have IntelliMirror technology, encrypted filesystem etc. etc.
> The networking stack has been improved (giving you IPSec for example)
> or a much better DNS, WINS and DHCP implementation than before.
> And one could continue this list. Not to mention that the codebase has
> been significantly cleaned up. All that results in a much higher stability
> of
> Win2000 compared to NT4.
> 
> J�rgen

But it still is not as stable as Solaris or even Linux judging from
the number of reebots after I switched boxes on my desk. :-(

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

>> ...
>> All that results in a much higher stability
> > of
> > Win2000 compared to NT4.
> >
> > J�rgen
>
> But it still is not as stable as Solaris or even Linux judging from
> the number of reebots after I switched boxes on my desk. :-(

Then you have other problems. I (and collegues) are running W2K
or WinXP for several month without any reboot (and we have
load on the systems).

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:a8ub8b$col$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> Juergen Pfeifer <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:
> :
> :  but under the hood there are a lot
> : of differences in implementation that makes the huge difference between
> : Win2K and the NT4 kernel. The whole domain system has been
> : changed and Active Directory has been introduced. That makes large
> : Domains much easier to manage. COM+ has been integrated seamlessly,
> : [...]
> Is all this really in the kernel? In this case, is the kernel the
>
> best place for mostly user level functionality like COM+?
>
> : giving you a world class AppServer functionality including distributed

COM+ is of course  not part of the kernel, but is an integral part of the
OS.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Pascal Obry]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> writes:

> >> ...
> >> All that results in a much higher stability
> > > of
> > > Win2000 compared to NT4.
> > >
> > > J�rgen
> >
> > But it still is not as stable as Solaris or even Linux judging from
> > the number of reebots after I switched boxes on my desk. :-(
> 
> Then you have other problems. I (and collegues) are running W2K
> or WinXP for several month without any reboot (and we have
> load on the systems).

OT but... I agree with Juergen, Windows _used_ to be a very bad platform, but
today it is making really good progress, Windows NT was a nice move, Windows
2K and Windows XP are a big step forward they are very reliable and nice to
work with. Of course it is always a bit tricky to build Open Source softwares
on this platform (it is quite easier to use the Microsoft Compiler and
environment), but with a bit of effort it is possible to build a lot of the
nice tools we have on Unix (thanks to Cygwin).

I also agree with Jurgen that the underlying framework has changed a
lot... but if the .NET was the answer, what was the question ? A market
share, the fight with SUN and Java... what's the real value for the
enterprises ?

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Marin David Condic]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:ur8lnd5o4.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
> work with. Of course it is always a bit tricky to build Open Source
softwares
> on this platform (it is quite easier to use the Microsoft Compiler and
> environment), but with a bit of effort it is possible to build a lot of
the
> nice tools we have on Unix (thanks to Cygwin).
>
In what way is it tricky to build Open Source software on Windows? Can you
not build Open Source software using a Microsoft compiler? Maybe you can't
give away their part of the software but it would seem that anything you
build is yours.

Or do you mean that much Open Source software is developed for various
flavors of Unix and hence doesn't always translate well to Windows?

Just trying to understand where you're going with this. Lots of us use Ada
on PC's with Windows and I don't think that precludes development of Open
Source (depending on your definition of "Open Source" too...)


> I also agree with Jurgen that the underlying framework has changed a
> lot... but if the .NET was the answer, what was the question ? A market
> share, the fight with SUN and Java... what's the real value for the
> enterprises ?
>
Keep in mind that Microsoft is in business to make money for the
stockholders and not necessarily to further computer technology. They can,
and have, sold/attempted to sell things that move the market to further
dependence on Microsoft. (Not unlike a drug dealer giving away free samples
to get you hooked.) Not all of those things are good for the end users and
sometimes they have been rejected by the market. Maybe .NET fits into that
category - it has yet to be seen. Maybe its a Solution in search of a
Problem?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote in message news:<a90tsf$tms$07$1@news.t-online.com>...
> >> ...
> >> All that results in a much higher stability
> > > of
> > > Win2000 compared to NT4.
> >
> > But it still is not as stable as Solaris or even Linux judging from
> > the number of reebots after I switched boxes on my desk. :-(
> 
> Then you have other problems. I (and collegues) are running W2K
> or WinXP for several month without any reboot (and we have
> load on the systems).

My home Win2k system (an Athlon box with a non-intel chipset on which
I play a lot of games) tends to crash all the time, particularly while
playing DirectX games. My work NT4 system (A PIII system with an Intel
chipset on which I do development) generally stays up until we take a
power hit at work (or I stupidly test out one of the device drivers
I'm creating on it).

The point of this is:

  o  *Of*course* stability has everything to do with what you do with
the system. It'd have to be a truly crappy system to crash when
nothing's running. :-)

  o  As an end-user, the distinction doesn't really matter to me. The
fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, I currently find my
Win2k box significantly less stable than my NT4 box. Perhaps they did
clean up a kernel bug or two in NT, but whatever crashes they
prevented are being swamped by the overall buggyness of their hardware
support and their DirectX interface.

Now in defence of Windows, often the real culprit is the hardware.
Over the years I've found that while putting together a PC system is
fairly easy, putting together a *stable* one is pretty hard. Sun has
only a very few hardware combinations to worry about, so its much
easier for them to put together a stable system.

For instance, I think I increased the stability of my home system by
about %300 by just installing a case fan near the CPU. SETI@Home isn't
giving my CPU a breather *ever*, and that takes a toll in heat.
Similarly my wife's Win98 system for a long time had trouble with
reboots whenever her desk was bumped. After a while I got sick of her
yelling at the kids for bumping the desk, and determined to fix the
damn thing. It turned out that the power supply's circuit board had
broken near the mounting screw holes, and was thus swinging freely.
Whenever the system took a big bump, the PS circuit board would swing
back, and the circuits underneath would make contact with its metal
enclosure. Out go the lights.

But still we can't entirely let Microsoft off the hook here. They seem
to get things working fine with the most common hardware, and then
just quit. Folks with second-tier vendor stuff like Athlons and VIA
chipsets are just left swinging. What you end up with is a thousand
hardware vendors (who generally operate in very low-margin businesses)
trying to make their drivers work with 4 Windows OSes and the drivers
of a thousand other hardware vendors, which are all secret code and
moving targets. It just *cannot* be done. I have to constantly scan
the VIA and Athlon and nVidia websites for news of new compatability
problem fixes. The fact of the matter is that users are dying to help
fix problems, but The System in Windows won't let them.

For example, there was one problem some folks were having with crashes
while trying to burn music CD's. Over the course of a month assorted
users narrowed it down to systems with NT and a certian VIA
southbridge chip. VIA denied there was a problem. Next they figured
out that it happened whenever there was activity on both IDE busses,
and the soundcard was just using enough PCI resources to make the
problem show up more often. Then somone managed to reverse-engineer
the VIA bios and find a BIOS hack that made IDE behave diffently and
fix the issue. Later semone else made an NT device driver to apply it
at boot time. About a month later, VIA released a driver with the fix,
so the custom device driver was no longer nessecary. The punchline is
that it turned out that Linux folks had identified a similar problem
and fixed it months before.

I really don't see how the system Microsoft has set up of thousands of
interoperating secret device drivers in a secret kernel can ever hope
to compete for stability with the Linux system of drivers (and the
kernel) being standard and open and available for debugging by anyone
who happens to notice a problem with their particular hardware combo,
vendor or not.

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>but if the .NET was the answer, what was the question ? A market
>share, the fight with SUN and Java... what's the real value for the
>enterprises ?
Surely the .NET is a big enterprise of a huge company, and as such it has many
sides and aims. But as you ask about the real value, I suppose you mean a value
for programming (or software engineering) progress... Personally I prefer to
consider .NET as an attempt to build something like SuperDelphi (but certainly
in Microsoft's envelope). I did not yet look at the .NET (although I have read
C# draft docs when it was made available), so all what I can say about it is
a pure guess, and those who do not need the guesses in the presence of real
things should not read this message further.
  Note three things: 1) chief architect for Delphi and for the .NET is the same
person; 2) COM (read COM+ if you like) is already well-established object system,
independent of a particular programming language; 3) Microsoft Visual Studio
already has quite good IDE with many advanced features, and is generally
approved by programming community. So, why not to combine the things? Well,
it requires huge efforts, but Microsoft can afford that (and thanks Sun, has
a stimulus to do that). And it seems quite possible that the Delphi's chief
architect might consider that as an excellent challenge - to build the Super
Delphi, with COM instead of Object Pascal objects, CLI in the place of VCL etc.
  In addition, I found it particularly interesting that some part of the .NET
will be somehow available on FreeBSD (as "David C. Hoos" <david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com>
pointed out in his reply about the "Rotor": "...a substantial subset of what
is available in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The source code will build and
run under Windows XP or FreeBSD 4.5, ...").


Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> I really don't see how the system Microsoft has set up of thousands of
> interoperating secret device drivers in a secret kernel can ever hope


Wes: You sent me an email question about this message, but I really have 
no way of sending you an aswer, since I highly doubt a message sent to 
wesgroleau@despammed.com is going to reach you. :-)

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[David Brown]

Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:

> Wes: You sent me an email question about this message, but I really have 
> no way of sending you an aswer, since I highly doubt a message sent to 
> wesgroleau@despammed.com is going to reach you. :-)

Actually, it looks like a very reasonable address for someone to use for
posting.  despammed.com provides a mail filtering service.

Dave Brown

RE: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Mário Amado Alves]

<<
Not all of those things are good for the end users and sometimes they
have been rejected by the market. Maybe .NET fits into that category -
it has yet to be seen. Maybe its a Solution in search of a Problem?
>> (MCD)

Definitely. Actually to me it is not even clear what .NET _is_. /* Maybe
it's just me; however I undertand perfectly what Rotor--a thing "at the
heart of .NET"--is. So I might be confused--but not worried ;-) */

Cheers,
--MAA

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

David Brown <cla@davidb.org> wrote in message news:<pr4t8.35934$VQ2.16993909@twister.socal.rr.com>...
> Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> 
> > Wes: You sent me an email question about this message, but I really have 
> > no way of sending you an aswer, since I highly doubt a message sent to 
> > wesgroleau@despammed.com is going to reach you. :-)
> 
> Actually, it looks like a very reasonable address for someone to use for
> posting.  despammed.com provides a mail filtering service.

Ahhh, my mistake. It looked like a fake address, so when I couldn't
hit a website at www.despammed.com, I figured it must be. I guess next
time I try a ping test first. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Darren New]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> Ahhh, my mistake. It looked like a fake address, so when I couldn't
> hit a website at www.despammed.com, I figured it must be. I guess next
> time I try a ping test first. :-)

Better would be
  telnet despammed.com smtp

Best would be
  nslookup
  > set type=mx
  > despammed.com

:-)

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: [OT] ping alternatives

[Wes Groleau]

> Better would be
>   telnet despammed.com smtp

On some systems, this won't work.  In that case,
    telnet <host> 25

> Best would be
>   nslookup
>   > set type=mx
>   > despammed.com

Thanks - that's a little fancier than I've ever
done with nslookup.  I should learn more about it.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Pascal Obry]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:

> "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
> news:ur8lnd5o4.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
> > work with. Of course it is always a bit tricky to build Open Source
> softwares
> > on this platform (it is quite easier to use the Microsoft Compiler and
> > environment), but with a bit of effort it is possible to build a lot of
> the
> > nice tools we have on Unix (thanks to Cygwin).
> >
> In what way is it tricky to build Open Source software on Windows? Can you
> not build Open Source software using a Microsoft compiler? Maybe you can't
> give away their part of the software but it would seem that anything you
> build is yours.

I don't understand this part.

> Or do you mean that much Open Source software is developed for various
> flavors of Unix and hence doesn't always translate well to Windows?

Ok, I meant that.

> Just trying to understand where you're going with this. Lots of us use Ada
> on PC's with Windows and I don't think that precludes development of Open
> Source (depending on your definition of "Open Source" too...)

Well, I also use a lot Ada, but to build GCC/GNAT, GDB, Emacs, CVS (pserver),
gpg, AWS, GLADE, AdaSockets, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GDBM... you really need to have
a UNIX like environment. Or you need to port the software to avoid using
GNU/configure, GNU/automake or GNU/autoconf tools or whatever UNIX oriented
part that just does not work on Windows.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote in message news:<4519e058.0204110524.535514af@posting.google.com>...
> David Brown <cla@davidb.org> wrote in message news:<pr4t8.35934$VQ2.16993909@twister.socal.rr.com>...
> > Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Wes: You sent me an email question about this message, but I really have 
> > > no way of sending you an aswer, since I highly doubt a message sent to 
> > > wesgroleau@despammed.com is going to reach you. :-)
> > 
> > Actually, it looks like a very reasonable address for someone to use for
> > posting.  despammed.com provides a mail filtering service.
> 
> Ahhh, my mistake. It looked like a fake address, so when I couldn't
> hit a website at www.despammed.com, I figured it must be. I guess next
> time I try a ping test first. :-)

(sigh) And apparently is was just down last night and this morning. It
hits a website now.

Perhaps I should just give up and get a job working cattle...


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Marin David Condic]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:un0wacgxh.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Well, I also use a lot Ada, but to build GCC/GNAT, GDB, Emacs, CVS
(pserver),
> gpg, AWS, GLADE, AdaSockets, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GDBM... you really need to
have
> a UNIX like environment. Or you need to port the software to avoid using
> GNU/configure, GNU/automake or GNU/autoconf tools or whatever UNIX
oriented
> part that just does not work on Windows.
>


O.K. I understand your meaning now. The original comment just had me
confused.

This can be a real problem when developers get too OS-centric. There is a
tendency sometimes to believe that there is only One True Operating System
in the universe and then go forth and develop in such a way as to make it
difficult to run anywhere else. That's why I like developing a single,
monolithic application that only uses a command line and text files - you
can usually count on something like that porting readily.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Wes Groleau]

> Perhaps I should just give up and get a job working cattle...

I've thought that quite often in this profession.... :-)

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Marin David Condic]

"Wes Groleau" <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:3CB5E7FB.33731FBB@despammed.com...
>
> > Perhaps I should just give up and get a job working cattle...
>
> I've thought that quite often in this profession.... :-)
>

I always threaten to go get myself 40 acres and a mule and start up a dental
floss ranch in Montana - where the smallest unit of time will be a season...
:-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <un0wacgxh.fsf@wanadoo.fr>, Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> 
> "Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:
> 
>> "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
>> news:ur8lnd5o4.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>> > work with. Of course it is always a bit tricky to build Open Source
>> softwares
>> > on this platform (it is quite easier to use the Microsoft Compiler and
>> > environment), but with a bit of effort it is possible to build a lot of
>> the
>> > nice tools we have on Unix (thanks to Cygwin).
>> >
>> In what way is it tricky to build Open Source software on Windows? Can you
>> not build Open Source software using a Microsoft compiler? Maybe you can't
>> give away their part of the software but it would seem that anything you
>> build is yours.
> 
> I don't understand this part.
> 
>> Or do you mean that much Open Source software is developed for various
>> flavors of Unix and hence doesn't always translate well to Windows?
> 
> Ok, I meant that.

In that regard, Windows should be no harder than OS/400.

Open Source software is not different from normal software.
Making useful programs portable between operating systems
requires careful effort from the beginning.  If there
is no effort at portability put into some individual piece
of Open Source software, that is a problem that cannot be
blamed on Microsoft.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Steve Doiel]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message > Perhaps I should
just give up and get a job working cattle...
>

Does it pay better than digging ditches?

;-)

SteveD

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

"Steve Doiel" <nospam_steved94@attbi.com> wrote in message news:<r2rt8.7479$Gl6.3034@sccrnsc01>...
> "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message > Perhaps I should
> just give up and get a job working cattle...
> >
> 
> Does it pay better than digging ditches?

No, but compared to working S/W, the you have to put up with slightly
less bullsh...err..perhaps I'd better quit before I get in any further
trouble. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:

: No, but compared to working S/W, the you have to put up with slightly
: less bullsh...
       ^^^^^^^^^
Given todays amount of digesting animals per place, you must be
confronted with an outstanding number of surprising requirements :-)

- georg

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Pascal Obry]

Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> In that regard, Windows should be no harder than OS/400.
> 
> Open Source software is not different from normal software.

Well in theory yes, but Open Source softwares are using GNU/C and commercial
software on Windows use Microsoft compiler... and both are not really
compatible :)

> Making useful programs portable between operating systems
> requires careful effort from the beginning.  If there
> is no effort at portability put into some individual piece
> of Open Source software, that is a problem that cannot be
> blamed on Microsoft.

I do not blame Microsoft I was just saying that it is harder to build Open
Source software using GCC on Windows... And that most (if not all) Open Source
softwares are using GNU/C has the compiler and peoples use mostly GNU/Linux
systems to develop them. So as I said Windows 2000/XP is a very good platform
these days but it is just a bit harder to have the benefit of all ongoing Open
Source efforts.

BTW, Apple did a great job with Mac OS X, you have the famous Mac GUI and the
powerful and flexible UNIX environment... but this is another story.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <uit6wdhi7.fsf@wanadoo.fr>, Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> 
> Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

>> Making useful programs portable between operating systems
>> requires careful effort from the beginning.  If there
>> is no effort at portability put into some individual piece
>> of Open Source software, that is a problem that cannot be
>> blamed on Microsoft.
> 
> I do not blame Microsoft I was just saying that it is harder to build Open
> Source software using GCC on Windows... And that most (if not all) Open Source
> softwares are using GNU/C has the compiler and peoples use mostly GNU/Linux

I realize too much effort has already been spent discussing
the meaning of "Open Source", but to me it seems that source
described as "Open" should work with any compiler that matches
a language standard.

> systems to develop them. So as I said Windows 2000/XP is a very good platform
> these days but it is just a bit harder to have the benefit of all ongoing Open
> Source efforts.

So some popular software that happens to be Open Source today
is hard to build on Windows.  Certainly that is an attribute of
that particular software and not of Open Source.

Without checking, I will presume for the sake of discussion that
David Botton's COM software for Ada is Open Source.  Probably
it is not hard to build on Windows.  Possibly it is quite
hard to build (to the point of doing something useful) on Unix.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message news:<un0wacgxh.fsf@wanadoo.fr>...
> Well, I also use a lot Ada, but to build GCC/GNAT, GDB, Emacs, CVS (pserver),
> gpg, AWS, GLADE, AdaSockets, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GDBM... you really need to have
> a UNIX like environment. Or you need to port the software to avoid using
> GNU/configure, GNU/automake or GNU/autoconf tools or whatever UNIX oriented
> part that just does not work on Windows.

Ahhh. That's probably the source of the confusion right there. The
first thing I do with a new Windows box is install Emacs and cygwin.
Since my 4 previous boxes were 4 different shades of proprietary Unix,
this happens to exactly match the first steps I did with any of them
(install Emacs, gcc, gnumake, and friends). Since I generally can find
binary distributions for Windows rather than have to build everything
from sources, setup is actually quite a bit *easier* for Windows than
it has been in the past for Unix boxes. :-)

So essentially I have a Unix box that happens to use Windows as the
window manager. It crashes way more than a typical Unix box, but it
plays way more games too. Fair trade in my book. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ed Falis]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> So essentially I have a Unix box that happens to use Windows as the
> window manager. It crashes way more than a typical Unix box, but it
> plays way more games too. Fair trade in my book. :-)
> 
> 

Well, you can always get the XFree86 port for Cygwin, then grab IceWM 
and have a rather nice alternate.  I have a couple of boxes configured 
that way,and it works rather well.

- Ed

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ingo Marks]

Ed Falis wrote:

> Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
>> So essentially I have a Unix box that happens to use Windows as the
>> window manager. It crashes way more than a typical Unix box, but it
>> plays way more games too. Fair trade in my book. :-)
>> 
>> 
> 
> Well, you can always get the XFree86 port for Cygwin, then grab IceWM
> and have a rather nice alternate.  I have a couple of boxes configured
> that way,and it works rather well.

With libW11 (Xlib for Windows) you don't need an X server:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/libw11/?topic_id=809%2C909

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Pascal Obry]

dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) writes:

> Ahhh. That's probably the source of the confusion right there. The
> first thing I do with a new Windows box is install Emacs and cygwin.

What confusion ? In my first message I pointed out that Cygwin was a
very nice way to have a Unix like environment on Windows...

Anyway, I'm a bit lost with this thread now :)

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Marin David Condic]

"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:iDK7+9+GKkgk@eisner.encompasserve.org...
>
> I realize too much effort has already been spent discussing
> the meaning of "Open Source", but to me it seems that source
> described as "Open" should work with any compiler that matches
> a language standard.
>
That might be a bit too stringent a requirement. Even though Ada is one of
the best and most portable standards around, it still allows for quite a bit
of implementation variance even within the things that are "standard". Throw
on top of that the implementation specifics of connecting to an OS or other
utilities and how that might vary between implementations and platforms and
I think you're just in a morass where anything but the most trivial
applications wouldn't qualify as "Open Source"


>
> So some popular software that happens to be Open Source today
> is hard to build on Windows.  Certainly that is an attribute of
> that particular software and not of Open Source.
>
One might allow for the fact that (probably) the largest body of "Open
Source" software is being built by folks in the Linux or other flavors of
Unix environments. Clearly those apps are going to have a big tendency to
depend on Unix. Not to "blame" anyone - but it does tend to cause problems
for Windows users who might want to utilize that software.

Of course, one answer is for more Windows users to produce open source
variants of these popular programs. Could that be an opportunity for Ada?
Identify a handful of Open Source products that work on Linux/Unix but not
on Windows & produce similar apps that would work on Windows? (Or both,
using something like GtkAda?)


> Without checking, I will presume for the sake of discussion that
> David Botton's COM software for Ada is Open Source.  Probably
> it is not hard to build on Windows.  Possibly it is quite
> hard to build (to the point of doing something useful) on Unix.

A reasonable observation and again something that points to a niche that Ada
could exploit within the Open Source world.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

If you want to look Windows more like Unix and want to port Software more
easily to a Win2K environment, then you should perhaps wait until Windows
Services for Unix V 3.0 will be released. This contains a full blown Unix
subsystem on top of the NT microkernel, so this runs parallel to Win32 and
not on top of it as some kind of emulation layer (this has been formerly
known as Interix, but the new version is a reasonable improvement over the
last version). This is not free but is a product, but its quite affordable.
This "Microsoft Unix" is state of the art and has shared libs, a lot of GNU
software on it and much more.

Juergen

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:4519e058.0204121314.5daae178@posting.google.com...
> Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:<un0wacgxh.fsf@wanadoo.fr>...
> > Well, I also use a lot Ada, but to build GCC/GNAT, GDB, Emacs, CVS
(pserver),
> > gpg, AWS, GLADE, AdaSockets, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GDBM... you really need
to have
> > a UNIX like environment. Or you need to port the software to avoid using
> > GNU/configure, GNU/automake or GNU/autoconf tools or whatever UNIX
oriented
> > part that just does not work on Windows.
>
> Ahhh. That's probably the source of the confusion right there. The
> first thing I do with a new Windows box is install Emacs and cygwin.
> Since my 4 previous boxes were 4 different shades of proprietary Unix,
> this happens to exactly match the first steps I did with any of them
> (install Emacs, gcc, gnumake, and friends). Since I generally can find
> binary distributions for Windows rather than have to build everything
> from sources, setup is actually quite a bit *easier* for Windows than
> it has been in the past for Unix boxes. :-)
>
> So essentially I have a Unix box that happens to use Windows as the
> window manager. It crashes way more than a typical Unix box, but it
> plays way more games too. Fair trade in my book. :-)
>
>
> --
> T.E.D.
> Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
> Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

That sounds to me like you have a hardware problem or you are using some
rotten 3rd party driver for some of your hardware. And in case of certain
hardware problems or driver bugs an OS  might fail. Another common source
for crashes is that people tend to use Windows with priviledged accounts.
Then even a broken app can crash your system. You can easily get this if you
run a faulty app as root on Unix.

Juergen

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:4519e058.0204100701.25c99fb6@posting.google.com...
> "Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:<a90tsf$tms$07$1@news.t-online.com>...
> > >> ...
> > >> All that results in a much higher stability
> > > > of
> > > > Win2000 compared to NT4.
> > >
> > > But it still is not as stable as Solaris or even Linux judging from
> > > the number of reebots after I switched boxes on my desk. :-(
> >
> > Then you have other problems. I (and collegues) are running W2K
> > or WinXP for several month without any reboot (and we have
> > load on the systems).
>
> My home Win2k system (an Athlon box with a non-intel chipset on which
> I play a lot of games) tends to crash all the time, particularly while
> playing DirectX games. My work NT4 system (A PIII system with an Intel
> chipset on which I do development) generally stays up until we take a
> power hit at work (or I stupidly test out one of the device drivers
> I'm creating on it).
>
> The point of this is:
>
>   o  *Of*course* stability has everything to do with what you do with
> the system. It'd have to be a truly crappy system to crash when
> nothing's running. :-)
>
>   o  As an end-user, the distinction doesn't really matter to me. The
> fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, I currently find my
> Win2k box significantly less stable than my NT4 box. Perhaps they did
> clean up a kernel bug or two in NT, but whatever crashes they
> prevented are being swamped by the overall buggyness of their hardware
> support and their DirectX interface.
>
> Now in defence of Windows, often the real culprit is the hardware.
> Over the years I've found that while putting together a PC system is
> fairly easy, putting together a *stable* one is pretty hard. Sun has
> only a very few hardware combinations to worry about, so its much
> easier for them to put together a stable system.
>
> For instance, I think I increased the stability of my home system by
> about %300 by just installing a case fan near the CPU. SETI@Home isn't
> giving my CPU a breather *ever*, and that takes a toll in heat.
> Similarly my wife's Win98 system for a long time had trouble with
> reboots whenever her desk was bumped. After a while I got sick of her
> yelling at the kids for bumping the desk, and determined to fix the
> damn thing. It turned out that the power supply's circuit board had
> broken near the mounting screw holes, and was thus swinging freely.
> Whenever the system took a big bump, the PS circuit board would swing
> back, and the circuits underneath would make contact with its metal
> enclosure. Out go the lights.
>
> But still we can't entirely let Microsoft off the hook here. They seem
> to get things working fine with the most common hardware, and then
> just quit. Folks with second-tier vendor stuff like Athlons and VIA
> chipsets are just left swinging. What you end up with is a thousand
> hardware vendors (who generally operate in very low-margin businesses)
> trying to make their drivers work with 4 Windows OSes and the drivers
> of a thousand other hardware vendors, which are all secret code and
> moving targets. It just *cannot* be done. I have to constantly scan
> the VIA and Athlon and nVidia websites for news of new compatability
> problem fixes. The fact of the matter is that users are dying to help
> fix problems, but The System in Windows won't let them.
>
> For example, there was one problem some folks were having with crashes
> while trying to burn music CD's. Over the course of a month assorted
> users narrowed it down to systems with NT and a certian VIA
> southbridge chip. VIA denied there was a problem. Next they figured
> out that it happened whenever there was activity on both IDE busses,
> and the soundcard was just using enough PCI resources to make the
> problem show up more often. Then somone managed to reverse-engineer
> the VIA bios and find a BIOS hack that made IDE behave diffently and
> fix the issue. Later semone else made an NT device driver to apply it
> at boot time. About a month later, VIA released a driver with the fix,
> so the custom device driver was no longer nessecary. The punchline is
> that it turned out that Linux folks had identified a similar problem
> and fixed it months before.
>
> I really don't see how the system Microsoft has set up of thousands of
> interoperating secret device drivers in a secret kernel can ever hope
> to compete for stability with the Linux system of drivers (and the
> kernel) being standard and open and available for debugging by anyone
> who happens to notice a problem with their particular hardware combo,
> vendor or not.
>
> --
> T.E.D.
> Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
> Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Juergen Pfeifer]

Well, lets look a bit at history: Windows became really successfull when
Visual Basic arrived and made the platform much more easier to program. That
led to new apps that made the platform more attractive for developers... To
improve reusability they then invented COM as a very successfull component
model. You get it...?!

Today the platform is the Internet. .NET is a component model for the
internet. The .NET remoting architecture - its base for distributed
computing - is quite open and there exist some implementation of the
remoting model, e.g. SOAP over HTTP or a .NET proprietaty binary protocol
over IP. Java is a programming language for the Internet, but .NET is much
more: it is a language agnostic component model for the Internet. The
virtual object system in the .NET VM is far more oriented to that goal then
the JVM which was designed from the beginning for toasters and coffee
machines.  The metadata model and the reflection mechanism is very complete
and - unlike the JVM - you can extend even the metadata model. That provides
a very interisting and elegant framework for modern concepts like
declarative programming or aspect oriented programming. Not to menntion that
such a framework is an excellent base for mostly automatic and transparent
serialization support etc.

You should not identify .NET with C#. .NET is really language agnostic and
the intermediate language (the "bytecode") is designed from the beginning to
support that (for example there is a concept of references in the machine
model which makes it very easy to have procedures with out params; try this
with JVM). Most of the power is really in the virtual execution engine, the
virtual object model and the class libraries.

If you have a basic understanding of the architecture and then use Visual
Studio.NET to write a .NET component that exposes it's interfaces via SOAP
just by declarative programming, or write an ASP.NET page with a compelling
user interface just the way you did before with VB on Windows - then you
start to understand that the intention is to copy the successfull Windows
<-> VB story in the Internet era: provide an iinternet standards based
platform and a component and programming model that makes it very easy to
write services and apps for the platform.

Juergen

"M�rio Amado Alves" <maa@liacc.up.pt> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:mailman.1018529522.8353.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
> <<
> Not all of those things are good for the end users and sometimes they
> have been rejected by the market. Maybe .NET fits into that category -
> it has yet to be seen. Maybe its a Solution in search of a Problem?
> >> (MCD)
>
> Definitely. Actually to me it is not even clear what .NET _is_. /* Maybe
> it's just me; however I undertand perfectly what Rotor--a thing "at the
> heart of .NET"--is. So I might be confused--but not worried ;-) */
>
> Cheers,
> --MAA
>

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[jim]

Ted, perhaps you should look at a mac with os x on it.  its REAL unix,
runs macos 9, Aqua, X-windows, and yes windows xx AND it plays a lot of
games.  not as much as windows perhaps but way more than unix so its a
nicer compromise!  

I write ada code for Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, SGI, and Windows all on
the same laptop.

Jim


> So essentially I have a Unix box that happens to use Windows as the
> > window manager. It crashes way more than a typical Unix box, but it
> > plays way more games too. Fair trade in my book. :-)

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ingo Marks]

Juergen Pfeifer wrote:

> ...
> Java is a programming language for the Internet, but .NET is much more: 
> ...

It's nice (for Microsoft) that you advertise .NET for them. But this is an 
Ada newsgroup and some of us are just interested in having Ada support for 
.NET. AFAIK no vendor plans to do this so .NET isn't attractive for Ada 
developers. Maybe someday someone starts a Ada.NET project - I don't know. 
I have read a document from MS Research mentioning that it would 
theoretically be possible to have Ada support for .NET. Currently Java 
support for Ada is much more interesting because there exists a working Ada 
frontend producing Java Bytecode. The DotGNU project (competitional 
framework to .NET) plans to support Java Bytecode so this framework is also 
more interesting than .NET (at least for me).

> You should not identify .NET with C#. .NET is really language agnostic and
> the intermediate language (the "bytecode") is designed from the beginning
> to support that (for example there is a concept of references in the
> machine model which makes it very easy to have procedures with out params;
> try this with JVM). Most of the power is really in the virtual execution
> engine, the virtual object model and the class libraries.

This may be true. But it doesn't help us as long there is no Ada compiler 
for .NET. For myself, I don't want to switch to .NET and write all my 
applications for .NET only but just to have the _option_ to code in Ada 
when I need to write .NET applications.

> ... provide an iinternet standards
> based platform and a component and programming model that makes it very
> easy to write services and apps for the platform.

The last sentence you should have written this way:

> easy to write services and apps for the _Windows_ platform.

I know that MS eagerly tries to convince developers to .NET and asserts 
that .NET would be a platform independent framework. But

a) Steve Ballmer himself has emphasized at CeBit 2002 in Hannover that MS 
will hinder every competition to the .NET framework by using its patents. 
MS allows competitional frameworks (like Mono) just for "academical 
research".

b) From experience I know: When MS says "platforms" they always mean 
Windows platforms only.

c) Many companies are not interested in .NET because they already use Java 
and/or they don't agree with the new license politics of Microsoft which 
forces them to follow every update. And some companies are neither 
interested in Java/J2EE nor in .NET because they want to keep their 
knowledge secret and know that there exist pretty good decompilers 
revealing their knowledge ;-)

.NET is a nice framework but suitable for Windows developers only. I think 
it is not wise to be dependent from one vendor only. I like Ada because its 
standards are really platform independent. There are (even free) compilers 
out there for many platforms and this makes porting applications between 
platforms really possible.

Ada just needs some standardization and some more good libraries. Then ... 
who knows? Why should it not become a new (little ;-) competitor to the 
Java and .NET frameworks? This would be good for everyone because we all 
know that competition betters quality.

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Juergen Pfeifer <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:

Hm. This sounds as if CORBA, Distributed SOM, protocols, inter-language
operability and previous research have never been there before MS
invented the beast. As always....

: [.NET] is a language agnostic

to (quite) some extent

:  The
: virtual object system in the .NET VM is far more oriented to that goal then
: the JVM which was designed from the beginning for toasters and coffee
: machines.

A comparison to CORBA is much more appropriate I think.

: You should not identify .NET with C#. .NET is really language agnostic

to some extent. (Not a bad thing, but neither a technical sensation.)

:  provide an iinternet standards based
: platform and a component and programming model that makes it very easy to
: write services and apps for the platform.

apps writing made very easy...  O.K., the tedious parts are well integrated,
and can be done in short time. 
(database access, GUI, i.e. graphically framed text lists and text
buttons aka dialog windows :),  network integration, ...)
Does that make writing the core logic any more easy?

Is .NET the first component framework? No.
You don't know it? Seems like marketing power is still an issue.

Georg

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Georg Bauhaus]

Juergen Pfeifer <nospam@nospam.org> wrote:
:  This is not free but is a product,

If you allow me to be picky, being a product may mean having
been produced. GNAT not a product? Ha! CLAW not a product because
there is a no-cost version? I think StarOffice, OS/360, .NET
framework, free beer, ... all qualify as products perfectly well.
GNU/Linux is a product with full support available.

: This "Microsoft Unix" is state of the art and has shared libs, a lot of GNU
: software on it and much more.

INcidentally, AT&T has made a similar thing, UWIN. Anything to do
with it?

Georg

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Marin David Condic]

That's a little definitional & may come under various legal considerations.
If you develop something under a government grant (such as SBA or various
military things) they will have lots of requirements you need to meet and
giving something away at no cost may not be in that list. So there may be a
clash between "free" and "product" depending on the context.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:a9h034$cal$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
>
> If you allow me to be picky, being a product may mean having
> been produced. GNAT not a product? Ha! CLAW not a product because
> there is a no-cost version? I think StarOffice, OS/360, .NET
> framework, free beer, ... all qualify as products perfectly well.
> GNU/Linux is a product with full support available.
>

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Wes Groleau]

> INcidentally, AT&T has made a similar thing, UWIN. Anything to do
> with it?

Great name!  :-)  

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote in message news:<a9fis4$q67$05$1@news.t-online.com>...
> Well, lets look a bit at history: Windows became really successfull when
> Visual Basic arrived and made the platform much more easier to program. That

Revisionist history perhaps. Microsoft originally supported VB for
both DOS and Windows. When I say "Windows", I mean the original pre-95
Windows, which never really was very popular at all. (VB was released
in 1991) Many businesses used Windows as a platform for MS's Office
apps (which did not yet own the market like they do today), and some
home users had it, but most people stuck with DOS.

There are lots of good candidates for "the thing that made Windows
successfull" which could be reasonably argued. VB is not really one of
them.

A good VB history page is available at
http://www.johnsmiley.com/visualbasic/vbhistory.htm

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

"Juergen Pfeifer" <nospam@nospam.org> wrote in message news:<a9fh3u$7a1$04$1@news.t-online.com>...
> If you want to look Windows more like Unix and want to port Software more
> easily to a Win2K environment, then you should perhaps wait until Windows
> Services for Unix V 3.0 will be released. This contains a full blown Unix
> subsystem on top of the NT microkernel, so this runs parallel to Win32 and
> not on top of it as some kind of emulation layer (this has been formerly
> known as Interix, but the new version is a reasonable improvement over the
> last version). This is not free but is a product, but its quite affordable.
> This "Microsoft Unix" is state of the art and has shared libs, a lot of GNU
> software on it and much more.

We had 1.0 and 2.0 here (we needed NFS). I don't suppose this
"Microsoft Unix" would happen to be a relabeled MKS Unix tools
distribution? There was a "demo version" of it on the 1.0 and 2.0
CD's.

As I remember, it was about $500.

-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ed Falis]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> We had 1.0 and 2.0 here (we needed NFS). I don't suppose this
> "Microsoft Unix" would happen to be a relabeled MKS Unix tools
> distribution? There was a "demo version" of it on the 1.0 and 2.0
> CD's.
> 
> As I remember, it was about $500.
> 


Not the same thing at all.

- Ed

[OT] (was): Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Kent Paul Dolan]

It's sort of bemusing in one thread here to see educators cheering on
their students' self-weaning from the Microsoft hegemony, and in another
to see plans to join the thundering herds self-directed into yet another
Microsoft-initiated proprietary system.  Obviously the "evil" of "Evil
Empire" is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

xanthian.


-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: Ada & .Net (Rotor)

[Ted Dennison]

jim <jim_evart@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<150420021959070675%jim_evart@yahoo.com>...
> Ted, perhaps you should look at a mac with os x on it.  its REAL unix,
> runs macos 9, Aqua, X-windows, and yes windows xx AND it plays a lot of
> games.  not as much as windows perhaps but way more than unix so its a
> nicer compromise!  

You don't understand. There can be no compromise on the gaming issue.
I buy a lot of games at full price *the day* they come out, because I
can't wait. Macs may play more games than Linux, but they still get
fewer games than Windows and generally get them later. For my gaming
rig I need *the* gaming OS.

However, my parents are MacHeads, and I've been trying to talk them
into getting OSX installed. It would be awfully nice to have a usable
machine over there when I go visit. :-)


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html