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: 103376,75ceae0e15e2ed62 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-09-06 23:59:41 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: The Ada experience. Date: 6 Sep 2002 23:59:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <4519e058.0209062259.1ab868de@posting.google.com> References: <9a25nugj860iofuv46h2l2bbvlgf4ophc0@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.115.221.98 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1031381981 9383 127.0.0.1 (7 Sep 2002 06:59:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Sep 2002 06:59:41 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28767 Date: 2002-09-07T06:59:41+00:00 List-Id: henderson was no auteur wrote in message news:<9a25nugj860iofuv46h2l2bbvlgf4ophc0@4ax.com>... > >I still think that the greatest obstacle is the Ada out of box experience. > > I have to agree. > I have never used the pro version of GNAT. ( no big bucks here) > However, the free version with the various free IDEs is abyssmal. > > It feels like something out of the sixties. I'm guessing you are comparing it to VisualC++, no? I suppose it depends on your perspective. For me, developing using VisualC++ (version 6.0) feels like playing with a toy compared to the Gnat toolkit. The editor is nice looking, but not nearly functional enough. The compiler doesn't implement the language properly (or even very well). Template support is a particular disaster. It has gawd-aful error messages, which causes the user way more work that should be nessecary to figure out what they did wrong (its not uncommon for something simple like a missing semicolon to pull an error somewhere deep in a standard library header file). It comes with a semi-functional non-standard version of the STL. To top it off, its chock full of code-generation bugs, which act as little day-wasting land mines for you to periodicly step on. And good luck trying to get Bill G. to fix them for you, or getting the sources to fix them yourself. The code builder is too moronic figure out recompilation dependancies without manual user intervention (which is just begging for errors). Maintaining all those dependancies manually in a large project is simply impossible. But I'll grant you, its a nice *shiny* toy. :-)