* Ada is popular after all @ 2007-02-05 16:54 Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-02-05 16:54 UTC (permalink / raw) Remember my tirade [1] about how some languages are the "zen masters" of programming? I quickly looked at the results of Debian's Popularity Contest [2], which ranks packages in Debian according to their popularity. (This ranking helps choose which CD-ROM or DVD-ROM each package ships on. There are currently 23 CD-ROMs or 3 DVD-ROMs for i386 alone.) [1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/msg/27adfc53e2cb4ac1 [2] http://popcon.debian.org I only looked at the "zen master" languages and at the "votes" column in the popularity contest results. Here is what I found: Language Package Votes --------------------------- Ada gnat 98 Pascal fp-compiler 65 Pascal gpc 55 Eiffel smarteiffel 20 Modula-2 m2c 4 Oberon oo2c 1 Granted, the two Pascal compilers combined beat gnat, but just look at the graph on [3] for the evolution since 2004. Something's happening. [3] http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php? packages=fp-compiler%2C+gnat%2C +gpc&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&beenhere=1 Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series of articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The December issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a mention of "the next article"... -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 16:54 Ada is popular after all Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 18:24 ` Jeffrey R. Carter ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Yves Bailly @ 2007-02-05 17:54 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Remember my tirade [1] about how some languages are the "zen masters" > of programming? I quickly looked at the results of Debian's Popularity > Contest [2], which ranks packages in Debian according to their > [...] > Granted, the two Pascal compilers combined beat gnat, but just look at > the graph on [3] for the evolution since 2004. Something's happening. It seems we're many to work hard to promote Ada in some way or another, so in the long run there's hope ;-) > Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series of > articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The December > issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a mention of > "the next article"... Thanks for noting them :-) I hope you found them valuable enough, you most probably didn't learn anything, but hopefully some might "see the light". I can say that I received numerous feedback for those articles (asking for source code, more details, etc.), already more than for my serie on Qt (C++, 24 on Qt3, 8 on Qt4). So yes, it seems that Ada is rather popular after all. If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know. Regards, -- (o< | Yves Bailly : http://kafka-fr.net | -o) //\ | Linux Dijon : http://www.coagul.org | //\ \_/ | | \_/` ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly @ 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 21:05 ` Frederic Praca ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-02-05 20:28 UTC (permalink / raw) Yves Bailly writes: [Ada articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France] > I can say that I received numerous feedback for those articles > (asking for source code, more details, etc.), already more than for > my serie on Qt (C++, 24 on Qt3, 8 on Qt4). So yes, it seems that Ada > is rather popular after all. I'm glad to hear that. > If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know. Just one: they're really good. I bought all issues of GMLF where they appear, except for Jan and Feb 2007 because I couldn't find them in Brussels. Keep up the good work! At a local GNU/Linux copy party, I once introduced Ada to two students in CS, and noted that "unfortunately Ada is not a fashionable language". One of the students said: "oh yes, it is fashionable, what with all these articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France!" I hope you find more to say about Ada in future articles. It seems you've now covered pretty much everything about the language, but maybe (just a suggestion) you might like to extend the series with Toy Lovelace, Qt4Ada or GtkAda? -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-02-05 21:05 ` Frederic Praca 2007-02-05 23:11 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-07 15:16 ` Pascal Obry 2 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Frederic Praca @ 2007-02-05 21:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:28:09 +0100, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit : > Yves Bailly writes: > [Ada articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France] > > I can say that I received numerous feedback for those articles > > (asking for source code, more details, etc.), already more than for > > my serie on Qt (C++, 24 on Qt3, 8 on Qt4). So yes, it seems that Ada > > is rather popular after all. > > I'm glad to hear that. > > > If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know. > > Just one: they're really good. I bought all issues of GMLF where they > appear, except for Jan and Feb 2007 because I couldn't find them in > Brussels. Keep up the good work! > > At a local GNU/Linux copy party, I once introduced Ada to two students > in CS, and noted that "unfortunately Ada is not a fashionable > language". One of the students said: "oh yes, it is fashionable, what > with all these articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France!" > > I hope you find more to say about Ada in future articles. It seems > you've now covered pretty much everything about the language, but > maybe (just a suggestion) you might like to extend the series with Toy > Lovelace, Qt4Ada or GtkAda? And (another suggestion) why not talking about OpenRavenscar (http://polaris.dit.upm.es/~ork/ ) or MarteOS (http://marte.unican.es/ ) which allow to code in Ada for Real Time embedded systems ? Fred ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 21:05 ` Frederic Praca @ 2007-02-05 23:11 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-07 15:16 ` Pascal Obry 2 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Yves Bailly @ 2007-02-05 23:11 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Yves Bailly writes: >> If you have any comment about the articles, please let me know. > Just one: they're really good. I bought all issues of GMLF where they > appear, except for Jan and Feb 2007 because I couldn't find them in > Brussels. Keep up the good work! > > At a local GNU/Linux copy party, I once introduced Ada to two students > in CS, and noted that "unfortunately Ada is not a fashionable > language". One of the students said: "oh yes, it is fashionable, what > with all these articles in GNU/Linux Magazine France!" :-) That's nice to read, all this work lead to something after all! > I hope you find more to say about Ada in future articles. It seems > you've now covered pretty much everything about the language, but > maybe (just a suggestion) you might like to extend the series with Toy > Lovelace, Qt4Ada or GtkAda? About ToyLovelace, I'm trying to convince Xavier Grave (the author) to write something about it by himself. Qt4Ada is not yet enough advanced I'm afraid (but it's improving). And there has been already an article about GtkAda in GLMF : http://www.fdn.fr/~sdescarp/realisations/articles/LM66/LM66_Ada GTK+, le duo gagnant.html Also, I don't know Gtk well enough to write anything sensible about it. I was trying to write something about Annex E, using Glade, but with no luck. It seems there are some problems in the latest Glade, at least it's what have been said in this forum (the thread starting at "Help with Glade (Annex E) on Windows" by Gene). About OpenRavenscar or MarteOS (to answer Frederic), I have absolutely *no* experience in real-time or embedded programming, so I won't write anything about it. But if you wish to write something yourself, I'd be glad to introduce you to GLMF's redactor-in-chief. There's also that stupid convention, according to which there's *only* 24h a day. In combination with another stupid convention which says you have to work 8-10h a day to earn money so that you and your family can eat at lunch, it doesn't left much room to find nice ideas :-/ Anyway, any idea is welcome! Regards, -- (o< | Yves Bailly : http://kafka-fr.net | -o) //\ | Linux Dijon : http://www.coagul.org | //\ \_/ | | \_/` ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 21:05 ` Frederic Praca 2007-02-05 23:11 ` Yves Bailly @ 2007-02-07 15:16 ` Pascal Obry 2 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2007-02-07 15:16 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Ludovic Brenta Ludovic Brenta a �crit : > I hope you find more to say about Ada in future articles. It seems > you've now covered pretty much everything about the language, but > maybe (just a suggestion) you might like to extend the series with Toy > Lovelace, Qt4Ada or GtkAda? or AWS ? Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 16:54 Ada is popular after all Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly @ 2007-02-05 18:24 ` Jeffrey R. Carter 2007-02-05 20:23 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-07 14:27 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 2007-02-07 15:34 ` Ada is popular after all Alex R. Mosteo 3 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-02-05 18:24 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta wrote: > > Language Package Votes > --------------------------- > Ada gnat 98 This is an unidentified version, presumably the default. There's also gnat-4.1 97 gnat-3.3 5 gnat-3.4 2 gnat-3.2 1 gnat-4.0 1 How do they fit into this? -- Jeff Carter "Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!" Monty Python's Flying Circus 53 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 18:24 ` Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-02-05 20:23 ` Ludovic Brenta 0 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2007-02-05 20:23 UTC (permalink / raw) Jeffrey R. Carter writes: > Ludovic Brenta wrote: >> >> Language Package Votes >> --------------------------- >> Ada gnat 98 > > This is an unidentified version, presumably the default. There's also > > gnat-4.1 97 > gnat-3.3 5 > gnat-3.4 2 > gnat-3.2 1 > gnat-4.0 1 > > How do they fit into this? Indeed, gnat is the default, per Debian Policy for Ada. In Sarge, that was gnat 3.15p but now in Etch, it is almost empty and provides just one symbolic link: /usr/bin/gnatgcc -> gcc-4.1. Most importantly it depends on the actual compiler package, gnat-4.1. The other versions (3.3 .. 4.0) are older and no longer provided in Debian. They were never supported anyway. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 16:54 Ada is popular after all Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-05 18:24 ` Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-02-07 14:27 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 2007-02-10 12:41 ` Ada is popular after all (POSIX binding) Guillaume Foliard 2007-02-07 15:34 ` Ada is popular after all Alex R. Mosteo 3 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Jacob Sparre Andersen @ 2007-02-07 14:27 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta wrote: My interpretation of the pop-con numbers is not quite as optimistic as yours, but we are definitely not going backwards compared to other languages. > Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series > of articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The > December issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a > mention of "the next article"... Sounds good. I am working on another attempt to improve the popularity of Ada: I just started teaching the course on POSIX programming at DMU-Syd (http://www.dmusyd.edu/) for the second time. This time I am using Ada. Last year I tought the same course using C. It is still too early to tell if it works out significantly better using Ada. So far I can just say that I haven't had any complaints about the choice of language. Formally the whole education is based on Java, but I got an excemption from that rule when I was hired, so I am free to use Ada, Bash and C as I see fit. Doing POSIX programming in Ada is not quite as easy as I hoped: - There are apparently holes in the POSIX/Ada API compared to the POSIX/C API (utmp/wtmp comes to mind). - We have no easy alternative to "man 2 <system call>" and "man 3 <library call>". - Some design choices in the POSIX/Ada API seem illogical (error handling comes to mind). - Some implementation choices in Florist seem rather inefficient (access permissions come to mind). - Florist is buggy on Ubuntu (procedure Open_Or_Create comes to mind). I make the course materials available at <http://edb.jacob-sparre.dk/Posix_in_Ada/>. Comments and corrections are very welcome. Greetings, Jacob -- My brain needs a "back" button so I can remember where I left my coffee mug. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all (POSIX binding) 2007-02-07 14:27 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen @ 2007-02-10 12:41 ` Guillaume Foliard 2007-02-11 10:26 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Guillaume Foliard @ 2007-02-10 12:41 UTC (permalink / raw) Hello, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote: > Doing POSIX programming in Ada is not quite as easy as I hoped: > > - There are apparently holes in the POSIX/Ada API compared to the > POSIX/C API (utmp/wtmp comes to mind). > > - We have no easy alternative to "man 2 <system call>" and "man 3 > <library call>". > > - Some design choices in the POSIX/Ada API seem illogical (error > handling comes to mind). > > - Some implementation choices in Florist seem rather inefficient > (access permissions come to mind). > > - Florist is buggy on Ubuntu (procedure Open_Or_Create comes to > mind). > > I make the course materials available at > <http://edb.jacob-sparre.dk/Posix_in_Ada/>. > > Comments and corrections are very welcome. It might be interesting to share your views with the team working on the Ada POSIX binding revision. The ISO standard is currently being revised, and volunteers/contributors are welcome. You will find informations on the standard revision there : http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG9/n479.pdf Guillaume ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all (POSIX binding) 2007-02-10 12:41 ` Ada is popular after all (POSIX binding) Guillaume Foliard @ 2007-02-11 10:26 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Jacob Sparre Andersen @ 2007-02-11 10:26 UTC (permalink / raw) Guillaume Foliard wrote: > It might be interesting to share your views with the team working on > the Ada POSIX binding revision. The ISO standard is currently being > revised, and volunteers/contributors are welcome. You will find > informations on the standard revision there : > http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG9/n479.pdf Thanks for the invitation. I'm already in touch with Stephen Michell and signed up on the POSIX-Ada-comment mailing list. Greetings, Jacob -- �When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under it while the first legion marched across. If programmers today worked under similar ground rules, they might well find themselves getting much more interested in Ada!� -- Robert Dewar ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada is popular after all 2007-02-05 16:54 Ada is popular after all Ludovic Brenta ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2007-02-07 14:27 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen @ 2007-02-07 15:34 ` Alex R. Mosteo 3 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Alex R. Mosteo @ 2007-02-07 15:34 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Remember my tirade [1] about how some languages are the "zen masters" > of programming? I quickly looked at the results of Debian's Popularity > Contest [2], which ranks packages in Debian according to their > popularity. (This ranking helps choose which CD-ROM or DVD-ROM each > package ships on. There are currently 23 CD-ROMs or 3 DVD-ROMs for > i386 alone.) > > [1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/msg/27adfc53e2cb4ac1 > [2] http://popcon.debian.org > > I only looked at the "zen master" languages and at the "votes" column > in the popularity contest results. Here is what I found: > > Language Package Votes > --------------------------- > Ada gnat 98 > Pascal fp-compiler 65 > Pascal gpc 55 > Eiffel smarteiffel 20 > Modula-2 m2c 4 > Oberon oo2c 1 > > Granted, the two Pascal compilers combined beat gnat, but just look at > the graph on [3] for the evolution since 2004. Something's happening. > > [3] http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php? > packages=fp-compiler%2C+gnat%2C > +gpc&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&beenhere=1 > > Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series of > articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The December > issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a mention of > "the next article"... Also this newsgroup seems more alive than ever... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2007-02-11 10:26 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 12+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2007-02-05 16:54 Ada is popular after all Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 17:54 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-05 20:28 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-05 21:05 ` Frederic Praca 2007-02-05 23:11 ` Yves Bailly 2007-02-07 15:16 ` Pascal Obry 2007-02-05 18:24 ` Jeffrey R. Carter 2007-02-05 20:23 ` Ludovic Brenta 2007-02-07 14:27 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 2007-02-10 12:41 ` Ada is popular after all (POSIX binding) Guillaume Foliard 2007-02-11 10:26 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen 2007-02-07 15:34 ` Ada is popular after all Alex R. Mosteo
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