Re: Practicalities of Ada for app development

[quiet_lad <gavcomedy@gmail.com>]

On Jun 8, 2:35 pm, Jeffrey Carter <spam.jrcarter....@spam.not.acm.org>
wrote:
> On 06/08/2012 01:48 PM, wrp wrote:
>
>
>
> > 1. To begin with, I've heard it said that Ada, designed for embedded
> > system building, is simply not suited to apps for a general computing
> > platform. That's rather vague and I haven't seen any detailed
> > justification of that claim. What would you say?
>
> I would say everything you've heard is wrong. Ada is a general-purpose language
> that has been used successfully in every application domain. Ada is the language
> of choice for S/W that must be correct. Since I want all my S/W to be correct, I
> always use Ada. Examples of small Ada applications I've written include one to
> choose the signature (like the one at the end of this message), one to choose
> the sound to be played next time I log in (next time it will say, "What is your
> favorite color?"), and one to display a quote in a dialog window (today's is,
> "If you think you got a nasty taunting this time, you ain't heard nothing
> yet!"). There seems to be a theme there.
>
> A larger application is the Mine Detector game
> (http://pragmada.x10hosting.com/mindet.html).
>
> At work we have a large, concurrent, distributed, soft-real-time, web-accessible
> call-center application, but large parts of it do DB access and things that
> would be common in the kind of applications you want to make.
>
> > 2. I don't need tools to be free, but they have to be affordable to a
> > small shop. If I'm targeting x86-64 (and possibly ARM) is GNAT the
> > only compiler option I have?
>
> RR Software's Janus/Ada (for Windows) is reasonably priced. You might also look
> at Atego.
>
> Note that most compiler are for Ada 95. Only 3 of 7 compilers I'm aware of
> support the entire language in the current standard (published in 2007). GNAT is
> the only compiler I'm aware of that supports features from the next standard
> (hopefully published this year).
>
> Ada 95 is a very good language, so that might not be a concern. (Even Ada 83 is
> a better language than most of the competition.)
>
> > 3. How about the quality and availablity of supporting tools like
> > debuggers and profilers?
>
> One nice thing about Ada is not needing to use a debugger.
>
> > 4. How about production quality, open source libraries for things like
> > Unicode support, sockets, network communication, GUIs, etc? The stuff
> > atwww.dmitry-kazakov.delooks good, but most of what I have seen
> > online is from the 1980s and pretty rough to begin with.
>
> There are plenty of libraries available. You can find many through adaic.org.
>
> > 5. How well is incremental development supported? I'm thinking of
> > things like modular compiling and speed of the edit-compile-test
> > cycle.
>
> Unlike C, Ada has modules ("packages"). With them, stubs, and separate
> compilation, incremental development is supported well.
>
> > 6. Size and latency are sometimes an issue. I've heard that since GNAT
> > is oriented to building larger systems, the executables it produces
> > are comparatively bulky. What is the situation relative to C in that
> > regard?
>
> As I've said, everything you've heard is wrong. Equivalent programs in Ada and C
> create executables of about the same size using gcc (the key word is
> "equivalent"). Robert Dewar of AdaCore claims to have a collection of equivalent
> Ada and C programs that produce identical object code using gcc.
>
> > 7. What advanced tutorial material is there for using Ada in this way?
> > Say that I have Norman Cohen's _Ada as a Second Language_. What more
> > advanced material is available on subjects other than concurrency,
> > distributed processing, or real-time systems? On a related note, what
> > projects would you recommend looking at as examples of great code?
>
> Cohen is a pretty good book; I'm not sure that you need anything else. Note that
> even small applications can sometimes benefit from concurrency. Since Ada
> tasking is high-level and safe, it would a mistake not to learn about it so you
> can use it when warranted. Barne's book is a good choice. You might want to look
> at "Ada Distilled" by Richard Riehle. Again, adaic.org has a list of texts and
> tutorials.
>
> --
> Jeff Carter
> "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
> 62
>
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roman quote best this year!!!
wow is ada really even awesome for web?
watch out ruby!!
as unix admin I love idea of safety and correctness...